Nada-ku in Kobe City is located on the eastside, just a few kilometers away from the center of Kobe, and has a lot of sightseeing spots.
The Nada area has a zoo, a shopping street, museums, sake breweries, and a popular curry restaurant… and you can see ordinary daily life in Kobe here.

If you are thinking of visiting Kobe, then why don’t you make a reservation for a room at an inn, and have a freewheeling trip there?

The recommended inn in Kobe for people who are using a guesthouse for the first time

“Guesthouse MAYA” was opened in Nada-ku in 2017, and this is the inn where you can stay and feel comfortable even if you are staying at a guesthouse for the first time.
Maybe you feel anxious when you think about staying at guesthouse, and have questions are like these: “Do I have to sleep in a dormitory room?” “Are the shared spaces clean?” “How will I communicate with the staff, other guests, or even locals?”

But MAYA can be the best choice for these people who are worried about their first stay at guesthouse.
The first point is that it has not only dormitory rooms, but also private rooms.

MAYA has 3 types of private-type rooms: single, double, and multi-type.
They are all comfortable, very suitable for people who would like to sleep well in a private space, family travelers, or those on a business trip.

You can also make your own private space on the bunk beds in the dormitory rooms when you shut the curtain.
So the dormitory stay can be just enough for people who would like to stay overnight at a reasonable price.

People of various nationalities and a wide range of generations stay here, so you can have nice conversations with staff, other guests, and even local people who stop by sometimes.

Clean and stylish bathrooms and showers are all shared, but you can use them 24 hours.
I can now conclude that more than half of the guests are women.

The whole town is like a sightseeing facility! Come to this place with no plan and enjoy walking around!

MAYA is located along the Hankyu Railway, and the maroon-colored trains pass by very closely.
The view with these trains can be actually said to be “ordinary Kobe.”
Therefore, Maya is a good base for a trip where you are “traveling like living.”

The building was used as a hospital with a residence in the past, and the owner renovated it with “TEAM clampton,” a group dealing with renovation in Kobe.

The handsome owner says that he is excited when he finds out that some guests come to this place without any specific sightseeing plan.
This is because he can suggest some local experiences in Kobe to the guests!

If you walk for 10 minutes, you will find the “Suido-suji Shopping Street,” which is full of energy.
There are many individual local stores packed in here, and it is crowded with local residents who come here for daily shopping.

Of course you can buy some local food or ingredients at the shopping street, and then cook them at the kitchen in MAYA.

And it would be a nice side-trip for you to stop at some coffee shops where you can have a cup of coffee with special coffee beans, or find some nice bakeries.
This is a really “Kobe-ish” aspect of this local shopping street.

The Kobe nightview tour and the food walkingtour

The owner of MAYA is from Korea, and he trained himself at a guesthouse in Tokyo after working for a company in Tokyo.

When he decided to start his own guesthouse, he searched for a property which is located in an area that had a shopping street that people could walk to within 10 minutes.
In that process, he was attracted by the Suido-suji Shopping Street and its community.

MAYA conducts a tour visiting this shopping street, called “Food Walking Tour at the Local Shopping Street” once a week.
Guests and local people deepen exchanges through the tour.
And also, “The Local Secret Night View Tour” is pretty popular.
This tour will take you to some little-known spots where you can enjoy the beautiful night view – places which are not introduced in any guidebooks!

At first, come and stay at MAYA.
If you liked the atmosphere of MAYA and the town, then just try an extended stay there!
If you liked it even more, then maybe you should move there…?

I can sense that this kind of process can be found around MAYA and this energetic shopping street.

Photographs and text by Madoka Hori