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71-463: Asics began as Onitsuka Co., Ltd on September 1, 1949. Founder Kihachiro Onitsuka  [ ja ] began manufacturing basketball shoes in his hometown of Kobe , Hyogo Prefecture , Japan . The range of sports activities serviced by the company expanded to a variety of Olympic styles used since the 1950s by athletes worldwide. Onitsuka became particularly known for the Mexico 66 design, in which

142-652: A collection of Aesop's Fables (romanized as Esopo no fabulas ). The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity in Japan (Chibbett, 1977). From the mid-19th century onward, several systems were developed, culminating in the Hepburn system , named after James Curtis Hepburn who used it in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The Hepburn system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. For example, Lafcadio Hearn 's book Kwaidan shows

213-548: A female focused clothing brand, Unoha has also pledged to use organic and environmentally friendly materials in its products. Unoha's first brand ambassador was Harumi Sato . On July 1, 2024, Asics announced that it had discontinued Unoha the previous month after only 3 years of existence. Nike, Inc. (originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports) was founded to sell Onitsuka Tiger shoes in the US. When Phil Knight visited Japan in 1963, shortly after he graduated from Stanford University , he

284-501: A following naked vowel or semivowel). For example, the name じゅんいちろう is written with the kana characters ju - n - i - chi - ro - u , and romanized as Jun'ichirō in Revised Hepburn. Without the apostrophe, it would not be possible to distinguish this correct reading from the incorrect ju - ni - chi - ro - u ( じゅにちろう ). This system is widely used in Japan and among foreign students and academics. Nihon-shiki romanization

355-469: A port city, it remains Japan's fourth-busiest container port . Companies headquartered in Kobe include ASICS , Kawasaki Heavy Industries , and Kobe Steel , while over 100 international corporations have their Asian or Japanese headquarters in the city, including Eli Lilly and Company , Procter & Gamble , Boehringer Ingelheim , and Nestlé . The city is the point of origin and namesake of Kobe beef ,

426-552: A reclaimed island south of Port Island , also offers mostly domestic and charter flights, while Kansai International Airport in Osaka mainly serves international flights in the area. The JR West Sanyō Shinkansen stops at Shin-Kobe Station . Sannomiya Station is the main commuter hub in Kobe, serving as the transfer point for major intercity rail services: the JR Kobe Line connects Kobe to Osaka and Himeji , while both

497-546: A series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography. The most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was the Nippo jisho , a Japanese–Portuguese dictionary written in 1603. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels . Some consonants were transliterated differently: for instance,

568-400: Is a romanization system based on Japanese phonology, designed using the linguistic principles used by linguists in designing writing systems for languages that do not have any. It is a purely phonemic system, using exactly one symbol for each phoneme, and marking the pitch accent using diacritics . It was created for Eleanor Harz Jorden 's system of Japanese language teaching. Its principle

639-426: Is a slightly modified version of Nihon-shiki which eliminates differences between the kana syllabary and modern pronunciation. For example, the characters づ and ず are pronounced identically in modern Japanese, and thus Kunrei-shiki and Hepburn ignore the difference in kana and represent the sound in the same way ( zu ). Nihon-shiki, on the other hand, will romanize づ as du , but ず as zu . Similarly for

710-595: Is also home to 17 Japanese language schools for international students, including the international training group Lexis Japan. International schools serve both long-term foreign residents and expatriates living in Kobe and the Kansai region. The schools offer instruction in English, German , Chinese , and Korean . There are three English-language international schools: Canadian Academy , Marist Brothers International School , and St. Michael's International School. Kobe

781-402: Is extremely rare in Japan to use it to write Japanese (except as an input tool on a computer or for special purposes such as logo design), and most Japanese are more comfortable in reading kanji and kana. The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on Portuguese orthography . It was developed c.  1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Anjirō . Jesuit priests used the system in

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852-495: Is input. In addition, the following three "non-Hepburn rōmaji " ( 非ヘボン式ローマ字 , hi-Hebon-shiki rōmaji ) methods of representing long vowels are authorized by the Japanese Foreign Ministry for use in passports. This chart shows in full the three main systems for the romanization of Japanese: Hepburn , Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki : This chart shows the significant differences among them. Despite

923-655: Is most famous for its Kobe beef (which is raised in the surrounding Hyōgo Prefecture) and Arima Onsen (hot springs). Notable buildings include the Ikuta Shrine as well as the Kobe Port Tower . Nearby mountains such as Mount Rokkō and Mount Maya overlook the city. The city is widely associated with cosmopolitanism and fashion, encapsulated in the Japanese saying, "If you can't go to Paris, go to Kobe." The biannual fashion event Kobe Fashion Week, featuring

994-463: Is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Chinese ( kanji ) and syllabic scripts ( kana ) that also ultimately derive from Chinese characters. There are several different romanization systems. The three main ones are Hepburn romanization , Kunrei-shiki romanization (ISO 3602) and Nihon-shiki romanization (ISO 3602 Strict). Variants of the Hepburn system are

1065-498: Is romanized as one word kekkonsuru by some authors but two words kekkon suru by others. There is no universally accepted style of romanization for the smaller versions of the vowels and y -row kana when used outside the normal combinations ( きゃ , きょ , ファ etc.), nor for the sokuon or small tsu kana っ/ッ when it is not directly followed by a consonant. Although these are usually regarded as merely phonetic marks or diacritics, they do sometimes appear on their own, such as at

1136-611: Is significantly higher in summer than in winter, though on the whole lower than most parts of Honshū, and there is no significant snowfall. The average annual temperature in Kobe is 17.0 °C (62.6 °F). The average annual rainfall is 1,277.8 mm (50.31 in) with July as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 28.6 °C (83.5 °F), and lowest in January, at around 6.2 °C (43.2 °F). The highest temperature ever recorded in Kobe

1207-520: Is that such a system enables students to internalize the phonology of Japanese better. Since it does not have any of the other systems' advantages for non-native speakers, and the Japanese already have a writing system for their language, JSL is not widely used outside the educational environment. In addition to the standardized systems above, there are many variations in romanization, used either for simplification, in error or confusion between different systems, or for deliberate stylistic reasons. Notably,

1278-565: Is the site of Japan's first golf course, Kobe Golf Club , established by Arthur Hesketh Groom in 1903, and Japan's first mosque , Kobe Mosque , built in 1935. The city hosts the Kobe Regatta & Athletic Club , founded in 1870 by Alexander Cameron Sim , and a prominent foreign cemetery . A number of Western-style residences – ijinkan ( 異人館 ) – from the 19th century still stand in Kitano and elsewhere in Kobe. Museums include

1349-707: Is the site of a number of research institutes, such as the RIKEN Kobe Institute Center for developmental biology and medical imaging techniques, and Center for Computational Science (R-CCS, home of the Fugaku supercomputer ), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Advanced ICT Research Institute, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and

1420-479: The /k/ consonant was rendered, depending on context, as either c or q , and the /ɸ/ consonant (now pronounced /h/ , except before u ) as f ; and so Nihon no kotoba ("The language of Japan") was spelled Nifon no cotoba . The Jesuits also printed some secular books in romanized Japanese, including the first printed edition of the Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike , romanized as Feiqe no monogatari , and

1491-519: The ASCII character set. While there may be arguments in favour of some of these variant romanizations in specific contexts, their use, especially if mixed, leads to confusion when romanized Japanese words are indexed. This confusion never occurs when inputting Japanese characters with a word processor, because input Latin letters are transliterated into Japanese kana as soon as the IME processes what character

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1562-774: The Chūgoku Expressway (Osaka – Yamaguchi). The Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway runs from Kobe to Naruto via Awaji Island and includes the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge , the longest suspension bridge in the world. The Port of Kobe is one of Japan's busiest container ports. Sub Area Activity Hanshin of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces provides monitoring across Osaka Bay and Harima Sea . The city of Kobe directly administers 169 elementary and 81 middle schools, with enrollments of approximately 80,200 and 36,000 students, respectively. If

1633-740: The Hankyū Kobe Line and the Hanshin Main Line run from Kobe to Umeda Station in Osaka. Sanyō Electric Railway trains from Himeji reach Sannomiya via the Kōbe Rapid Transit Railway . Kōbe Electric Railway runs north to Sanda and Arima Onsen . Kobe Municipal Subway provides connections to Shin-Osaka and Sannomiya stations from Kobe's western and eastern suburbs. Additionally, Kobe New Transit runs two lines serving Kobe Airport and Rokko Island . Over Mount Rokkō ,

1704-603: The Hanshin Industrial Region . Kobe is the busiest container port in the region, surpassing even Osaka , and the fourth-busiest in Japan. As of 2004 , the city's total real GDP was ¥6.3 trillion, which amounts to thirty-four percent of the GDP for Hyōgo Prefecture and approximately eight percent for the whole Kansai region . Per capita income for the year was approximately ¥2.7 million. Broken down by sector , about one percent of those employed work in

1775-532: The International Phonetic Alphabet , the /j/ sound in や , ゆ , and よ are never romanized with the letter J . Japanese is written without spaces between words, and in some cases, such as compounds, it may not be completely clear where word boundaries should lie, resulting in varying romanization styles. For example, 結婚する , meaning "to marry", and composed of the noun 結婚 ( kekkon , "marriage") combined with する ( suru , "to do"),

1846-474: The Kobe City Museum and Museum of Literature . The city headquarters the professional wrestling promotion Dragongate , established in 2004 as an offshoot of Último Dragón 's original Toryumon system. The dialect spoken in Kobe is called Kobe-ben , a sub-dialect of Kansai dialect . Kobe hosted the 1985 Summer Universiade as well as the 1991 Men's Asian Basketball Championship , which

1917-511: The Kobe Collection , is held in Kobe. The jazz festival "Kobe Jazz Street" has been held every October at jazz clubs and hotels since 1981. It also hosts both a Festival, as well as a statue of Elvis Presley , the unveiling of which was heralded by the presence of former Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi . Kobe is well known in Japan as being a city for the affluent, as many high-end stores and mansions line its streets. Kobe

1988-762: The Taira fortress in Hyōgo-ku and the nearby Ikuta Shrine became the sites of the Genpei War battle of Ichi-no-Tani between the Taira and Minamoto clans . The Minamoto prevailed, pushing the Taira further. As the port grew during the Kamakura period , it became an important hub for trade with China and other countries. In the 13th century, the city came to be known by the name Hyōgo Port ( 兵庫津 , Hyōgo-tsu ) . During this time, Hyōgo Port, along with northern Osaka, composed

2059-617: The abolition of the han system in 1871 and the establishment of the current prefecture system that the area became politically distinct. Hyōgo Port was opened to foreign trade by the Shogunal government at the same time as Osaka on January 1, 1868, just before the advent of the Boshin War and the Meiji Restoration . At the time of the opening of the city for foreign trade, the area saw intense fighting resulting from

2130-695: The confectionery manufacturers Konigs-Krone and Morozoff Ltd. , Sun Television Japan and UCC Ueshima Coffee Co. There are over 100 international corporations that have their East Asian or Japanese headquarters in Kobe. Of these, twenty-four are from China, eighteen from the United States, and nine from Switzerland. Some prominent corporations include Eli Lilly and Company , Nestlé , Procter & Gamble , Tempur-Pedic , Boehringer-Ingelheim , and Toys "R" Us . In 2018, April, Swift Engineering USA, an American aerospace engineering firm established their joint venture in Kobe called Swift Xi Inc. Kobe

2201-603: The primary sector (agriculture, fishing and mining), twenty-one percent work in the secondary sector (manufacturing and industry), and seventy-eight percent work in the service sector . The value of manufactured goods produced and exported from Kobe for 2004 was ¥2.5 trillion. The four largest sectors in terms of value of goods produced are small appliances, food products, transportation equipment, and communication equipment making up over fifty percent of Kobe's manufactured goods. In terms of numbers of employees, food products, small appliances, and transportation equipment make up

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2272-769: The Asian Disaster Reduction Center. International organizations include the WHO Centre for Health Development , an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization . The Consulate-General of Panama in Kobe is located on the eighth floor of the Moriyama Building in Chūō-ku, Kobe . Itami Airport , in nearby Itami , serves primarily domestic flights throughout Japan, Kobe Airport , built on

2343-511: The Australian Olympic Team uniform would not contain cotton sourced from Xinjiang. Kobe Kobe ( / ˈ k oʊ b eɪ / KOH -bay ; Japanese : 神戸 , romanized :  Kōbe , pronounced [koꜜːbe] ), officially Kobe City ( 神戸市 , Kōbe-shi ) , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture , Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan 's seventh-largest city and

2414-497: The Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education. In addition, twenty-five high schools are run privately within the city. The total enrollment for high schools in 2006 was 43,400. Kobe is home to eighteen public and private universities, including Kobe University , Kobe Institute of Computing and Konan University , and eight junior colleges . Students enrolled for 2006 reached 67,000 and 4,100, respectively. Kobe

2485-716: The Onitsuka Tiger label. In 2015, Asics launched its "Asics Tiger" lifestyle brand to market sportswear inspired by the company's designs of the 1970s to 1990s. Asics bought the Swedish outdoor brand Haglöfs for ¥ 11.4 billion ($ 128.7 million) on July 12, 2010. In February 2016, Asics acquired fitness app Runkeeper . LionRock Capital Limited acquired a 100% interest in Haglöfs from Asics on December 18, 2023. Asics generated ¥570.4 billion in net sales and ¥35.2 billion in net income in fiscal year 2023. 50% of

2556-591: The United States as American National Standard System for the Romanization of Japanese (Modified Hepburn) , but that status was abolished on October 6, 1994. Hepburn is the most common romanization system in use today, especially in the English-speaking world. The Revised Hepburn system of romanization uses a macron to indicate some long vowels and an apostrophe to note the separation of easily confused phonemes (usually, syllabic n ん from

2627-599: The city from east to west. The main transport hub is Sannomiya Station , with the eponymous Kobe Station located to the west and the Shinkansen Shin-Kobe Station to the north. Mount Rokkō overlooks Kobe at an elevation of 931 m (3,054 ft). During autumn, it is famous for the rich change in colors of its forests . Kobe has nine wards ( ku ): per km2 Kobe has a humid subtropical climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfa ) with hot summers and cool to cold winters. Precipitation

2698-605: The city has two funicular lines and three aerial lifts as well, namely Maya Cablecar , Rokkō Cable Line , Rokkō Arima Ropeway , Maya Ropeway , and Shin-Kobe Ropeway . Kobe is a transportation hub for a number of expressways , including the Meishin Expressway ( Nagoya – Kobe) and the Hanshin Expressway (Osaka – Kobe). Other expressways include the Sanyō Expressway (Kobe – Yamaguchi ) and

2769-566: The city is closely tied to that of the Ikuta Shrine, and the name "Kobe" derives from kamube ( 神戸 , later kanbe ) , an archaic name for those who supported the shrine. During World War II , Kobe was lightly bombed in the Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942, along with Tokyo and a few other cities. Eventually, it was bombed again with incendiary bombs by B-29 Superfortress bombers on March 16 and 17, 1945 , causing

2840-617: The city were destroyed. The earthquake destroyed portions of the Hanshin Expressway , an elevated freeway that dramatically toppled over. In Japan, this earthquake is known as the Great Hanshin earthquake (or the Hanshin-Awaji earthquake). To commemorate Kobe's recovery from it, the city holds an event every December called the Luminarie , where the city center is decorated with illuminated metal archways. The Port of Kobe

2911-506: The city's Ikuta Shrine ) . Kobe became one of Japan's designated cities in 1956. Kobe was one of the cities to open for trade with the West following the 1853 end of the policy of seclusion and has retained its cosmopolitan character ever since with a rich architectural heritage dating back to the Meiji era . While the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake diminished some of Kobe's prominence as

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2982-411: The city's four private elementary schools and fourteen private middle schools are included, these figures jump to a total 82,000 elementary school students and 42,300 junior high students enrolled for the 2006 school year. Kobe also directly controls six of the city's twenty-five full-time public high schools including Fukiai High School and Rokkō Island High School. The remainder are administered by

3053-575: The civil war in progress. Shortly after the opening of Kobe to trade, the Kobe Incident occurred, where several western soldiers sustained wounds from gunfire by troops from Bizen. The region has since been identified with the West and many foreign residences from the period remain in Kobe's Kitano area . Kobe, as it is known today, was founded on April 1, 1889, and was designated on September 1, 1956 by government ordinance. The history of

3124-665: The company's income came from the sale of performance running shoes, 33% from other shoes, 6% from apparel and equipment, and 11% from Onitsuka Tiger. 16% of the company's sales were in Japan, 21% in North America, 27% in Europe, 14% in China and 21% in other regions. In March 2021, Asics launched Unoha (ウノハ), a brand geared towards women. The brand mainly sells its products online and does not use physical locations other than temporary pop-ups that appear around Japan. Apart from being

3195-644: The death of 8,841 residents and the destruction of 21% of Kobe's urban area . This incident inspired the well-known Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies and the book by Akiyuki Nosaka on which the film was based. It also features in the motion picture A Boy Called H . Following continuous pressure from citizens, on March 18, 1975, the Kobe City Council passed an ordinance banning vessels carrying nuclear weapons from Kobe Port. This effectively prevented any U.S. warships from entering

3266-467: The distinctive crossed stripes (now synonymous with the company as the "Tiger Stripes") were featured for the first time; martial artist Bruce Lee helped popularize the shoe. Onitsuka Tiger merged with fishing and sporting goods company GTO and athletic uniform maker Jelenk to form Asics Corporation in 1977; Onitsuka was named president of the new company. Despite the name change, a vintage range of Asics shoes are still produced and sold internationally under

3337-611: The early 20th century, some scholars devised syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin (rather like the Cherokee syllabary ) that were even less popular since they were not based on any historical use of the Latin script. Today, the use of Nihon-shiki for writing Japanese is advocated by the Oomoto sect and some independent organizations. During the Allied occupation of Japan ,

3408-556: The east and Sanda and Miki to the north. The landmark of the port area is the red steel Port Tower . A ferris wheel sits in nearby Harborland , a notable tourist promenade . Two artificial islands, Port Island and Rokkō Island , have been constructed to give the city room to expand. Away from the seaside at the heart of Kobe lie the Motomachi and Sannomiya districts, as well as Kobe's Chinatown , Nankin-machi , all well-known retail areas. A multitude of train lines cross

3479-475: The end of sentences, in exclamations, or in some names. The detached sokuon, representing a final glottal stop in exclamations, is sometimes represented as an apostrophe or as t ; for example, あっ! might be written as a'! or at! . The list below shows the Japanese readings of letters in Katakana, for spelling out words, or in acronyms. For example, NHK is read enu-eichi-kē ( エヌ・エイチ・ケー ) . These are

3550-539: The government of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) made it official policy to romanize Japanese. However, that policy failed and a more moderate attempt at Japanese script reform followed. Hepburn romanization generally follows English phonology with Romance vowels. It is an intuitive method of showing Anglophones the pronunciation of a word in Japanese. It was standardized in

3621-522: The home of Kobe University , and the site of one of Japan's most famous hot spring resorts, Arima Onsen . Tools found in western Kobe demonstrate the area was populated at least from the Jōmon period . The natural geography of the area, particularly of Wada Cape in Hyōgo-ku , led to the development of a port, which would remain the economic center of the city. Some of the earliest written documents mentioning

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3692-699: The most widely used. Romanized Japanese may be used in any context where Japanese text is targeted at non-Japanese speakers who cannot read kanji or kana, such as for names on street signs and passports and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language. It is also used to transliterate Japanese terms in text written in English (or other languages that use the Latin script) on topics related to Japan, such as linguistics, literature, history, and culture. All Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. Therefore, almost all Japanese can read and write Japanese by using rōmaji . However, it

3763-453: The name of the system would be rendered Kunreisiki . It is possible to elaborate these romanizations to enable non-native speakers to pronounce Japanese words more correctly. Typical additions include tone marks to note the Japanese pitch accent and diacritic marks to distinguish phonological changes, such as the assimilation of the moraic nasal /ɴ/ (see Japanese phonology ). JSL

3834-862: The new official kit manufacturer for the Australian Cricket Team , replacing German manufacturer Adidas . In March 2017, employees assembling Asics products in Cambodia fainted due to thick smoke present in the factory where they were working. The company responded to this by saying that it, along with the factory in question, would "address specific measures, with a focus on workers’ awareness and health and safety training, as well as including an improved air ventilation system". In March 2021, while several Western clothing brands expressed concern over allegations of forced Uyghur labor involved in Xinjiang cotton production, Asics also announced that

3905-461: The older kw- pronunciation; in modern Hepburn romanization, this would be written Kaidan ( lit.   ' ghost tales ' ). In the Meiji era (1868–1912), some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system entirely and using rōmaji instead. The Nihon-shiki romanization was an outgrowth of that movement. Several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. Later, in

3976-704: The pair じ and ぢ , they are both zi in Kunrei-shiki and ji in Hepburn, but are zi and di respectively in Nihon-shiki. See the table below for full details. Kunrei-shiki has been standardized by the Japanese Government and the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 3602 . Kunrei-shiki is taught to Japanese elementary school students in their fourth year of education. Written in Kunrei-shiki,

4047-403: The population are between the ages of 0 and 14, sixty-seven percent are between 15 and 64, and twenty percent are over the age of 65. Approximately 44,000 registered foreign nationals live in Kobe. The four most common nationalities are Korean (22,237), Chinese (12,516), Vietnamese (1,301), and American (1,280). The Port of Kobe is both an important port and manufacturing center within

4118-399: The port, because U.S. policy is to never disclose whether any given warship is carrying nuclear weapons. This nonproliferation policy has been termed the " Kobe formula ". On January 17, 1995, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake occurred at 5:46 am JST near the city. About 6,434 people in the city were killed, 212,443 were made homeless, and large parts of the port facilities and other parts of

4189-636: The province of Settsu (most of today's Kobe belonged to Settsu except Nishi Ward and Tarumi Ward , which belonged to Harima ). Later, during the Edo period , the eastern parts of present-day Kobe came under the jurisdiction of the Amagasaki Domain and the western parts under that of the Akashi Domain , while the center was controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate . It was not until

4260-441: The region come from the Nihon Shoki , which describes the founding of the Ikuta Shrine by Empress Jingū in AD 201. For most of its history, the area was never a single political entity, even during the Tokugawa period , when the port was controlled directly by the Tokugawa shogunate . Kobe did not exist in its current form until its founding in 1889. Its name comes from Kanbe ( 神戸 , an archaic title for supporters of

4331-566: The region include the Nihon Shoki , which describes the founding of the Ikuta Shrine by Empress Jingū in AD 201. During the Nara and Heian periods , the port was known by the name Ōwada Anchorage ( Ōwada-no-tomari ) and was one of the ports from which imperial embassies to China were dispatched. The city was briefly the capital of Japan in 1180, when Taira no Kiyomori moved his grandson Emperor Antoku to Fukuhara-kyō in present-day Hyōgo-ku. The Emperor returned to Kyoto after about five months. Shortly thereafter in 1184,

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4402-436: The standard names, based on the British English letter names (so Z is from zed , not zee ), but in specialized circumstances, names from other languages may also be used. For example, musical keys are often referred to by the German names, so that B ♭ is called bē ( べー ) from German B ( German: [beː] ). Sources: Kōjien (7th edition), Daijisen (online version). Note: Daijisen does not mention

4473-442: The third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama . It is located in the Kansai region , which makes up the southern side of the main island of Honshū , on the north shore of Osaka Bay . It is part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kyoto . The Kobe city centre is located about 35 km (22 mi) west of Osaka and 70 km (43 mi) southwest of Kyoto. The earliest written records regarding

4544-575: The three largest sectors. The GDP in Kobe Metropolitan Employment Area (2.4 million people) is US$ 96.0 billion in 2010. Japanese companies which have their headquarters in Kobe include ASICS , a shoe manufacturer; Daiei , a department store chain; Kawasaki Heavy Industries , Kawasaki Shipbuilding Co. , Kinki Sharyo , Mitsubishi Motors , Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (ship manufacturer), Mitsubishi Electric , Kobe Steel , Sumitomo Rubber Industries , Sysmex Corporation (medical devices manufacturer) and TOA Corporation . Other companies include

4615-399: The various mappings that Japanese input methods use to convert keystrokes on a Roman keyboard to kana often combine features of all of the systems; when used as plain text rather than being converted, these are usually known as wāpuro rōmaji . ( Wāpuro is a blend of wā do puro sessā word processor .) Unlike the standard systems, wāpuro rōmaji requires no characters from outside

4686-492: Was 38.8 °C (101.8 °F) on August 5, 1994; the coldest temperature ever recorded was −7.2 °C (19.0 °F) on February 27, 1981. As of September 2007, Kobe had an estimated population of 1,530,295 making up 658,876 households . This was an increase of 1,347 persons or approximately 0.1% over the previous year. The population density was approximately 2,768 persons per square kilometre, while there are about 90.2 males to every 100 females. About thirteen percent of

4757-426: Was Japan's busiest port and one of Asia's top ports until the Great Hanshin earthquake. Kobe has since dropped to fourth in Japan and, as of 2012, was the 49th- busiest container port worldwide . Wedged between the coast and the mountains, the city of Kobe is long and narrow. To the east is the city of Ashiya , while the city of Akashi lies to its west. Other adjacent cities include Takarazuka and Nishinomiya to

4828-434: Was held in the Exhibition Hall in Port Island with over 50 countries competing. Sister cities Romanization of Japanese The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language . This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as rōmaji ( ローマ字 , lit.   ' Roman letters ' , [ɾoːma(d)ʑi] or [ɾoːmaꜜ(d)ʑi] ) . Japanese

4899-478: Was impressed by Onitsuka Tiger shoes and immediately visited the Onitsuka Tiger office and asked to be their sales agent in the US. After a number of years the relationship crumbled and both companies sued each other, with Nike retaining the naming rights to several shoes. Asics sponsors a variety of sports associations, teams and individuals; sponsorships include World Athletics and the Los Angeles Marathon . The company announced on October 4, 2011, that it would be

4970-467: Was originally invented as a method for Japanese to write their own language in Latin characters, rather than to transcribe it for Westerners as Hepburn was. It follows the Japanese syllabary very strictly, with no adjustments for changes in pronunciation. It has also been standardized as ISO 3602 Strict . Also known as Nippon-shiki , rendered in the Nihon-shiki style of romanization the name is either Nihon-siki or Nippon-siki . Kunrei-shiki romanization

5041-458: Was the qualifier for the 1992 Summer Olympics Basketball Tournament . Kobe was one of the host cities of the 2002 FIFA World Cup , hosting matches at Noevir Stadium Kobe (then known as Wing Stadium Kobe), which was renovated to increase its capacity to 40,000 for the event. Kobe was one of the host cities for the official 2006 Women's Volleyball World Championship . Kobe also hosted the World Darts Federation World Cup in October 2017. The event

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