Photo: Nagono · CC BY-SA 3.0
Wadamisaki Battery (和田岬砲台), designed under Katsu Kaishū and built in 1864, is the only one of four identical round stone batteries on the Osaka Bay coast that survives in its original form. It stands inside Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' Kobe Shipyard and was Hyogo's first designated historic site (1921).
Why it's unique
Of four identical round stone batteries built on the Osaka Bay coast, Minatogawa and Imazu were demolished and Nishinomiya's burned, leaving only walls. This is the only one intact; that claim is the owner's.
The part you get to stand in is the two-storey wooden gun house inside the stone ring, the part that burned elsewhere, and getting there means riding through a working shipyard.
Before you go
The stone ring encloses a two-storey wooden gun house, which is the part that burned at Nishinomiya and the part you get to stand in here; no cannon was ever mounted.
You ride in by microbus past the working yard, which is half the appeal and why photography is allowed only inside the battery's first floor. Bring a passport: ID is checked at the gate.
