Kobe or Yokohama?

Neither is a beach city, but Yokohama has a little more choice. Kobe's Suma is the easier beach to reach, a long stretch of sand fifteen minutes from the centre by train, and Awaji Island's quieter shores across the strait need a car or bus.

From Yokohama, the Shonan coast at Zushi, Kamakura and Enoshima and the Miura Peninsula offer several broad beaches of grey-brown sand, even if they take longer to reach. In both cities the swimming season is just July and August.

Both are excellent places to eat, but for different reasons. Kobe's table is beef grilled on teppanyaki counters, a baking and pastry tradition dating from its foreign merchants, and the sake breweries of Nada, where you can taste at the source.

Yokohama leans towards noodles and Chinese cooking. Its Chinatown is the largest in Japan, far bigger than Kobe's compact Nankinmachi, and the city lays claim to iekei ramen and even has a ramen museum. For an evening of grilled skewers, Noge's tiny counters are hard to beat.

Both are treaty ports and tell much the same story through similar sights. Kobe's merchant houses climb the Kitano slopes and Yokohama's line the Yamate Bluff. The difference lies in each city's centrepiece. Kobe has its moving record of the 1995 earthquake and Tadao Ando's art museum on the bay.

Yokohama has Sankeien, a landscaped garden filled with temple buildings and teahouses moved from Kyoto and Kamakura, and the 1930s liner Hikawa Maru. Either city fills two days of sightseeing comfortably.

Yokohama offers a bit more to do after dark. Noge's warren of standing bars fills with office workers, Kannai adds karaoke and pubs, and Minato Mirai has bars looking over the lit harbour.

Kobe's evenings centre on the lanes north of Sannomiya, with small whisky and cocktail bars where a handful of regulars sit at the counter. It is a good scene for a quiet drink, but not much more. Club-goers leave both cities, heading to Osaka from Kobe and to Tokyo from Yokohama.

Kobe has the stronger outdoors, because its mountains rise straight behind the streets. Trails climb on foot from Shin-Kobe station past the Nunobiki waterfalls into the Rokko range, and the ropeway up Mount Maya gives a night view over the bay. A short train ride west takes you to the rugged Suma Alps.

Yokohama's green country lies further out. There are wooded temple trails above Kamakura and coastal walks on Miura, and the Tanzawa mountains and Hakone's volcanic valleys are an hour or more inland. The reward is Mount Fuji on the horizon on clear winter days.

Both are superb bases, but Kobe reaches more of Japan's headline sights. Himeji Castle is under an hour west, Osaka is twenty minutes east, Kyoto and Nara are easy days out, and the shinkansen stretches as far as Hiroshima and Miyajima.

From Yokohama the trips cluster around Tokyo and Kamakura, both close enough to visit again and again, with Enoshima, Hakone and the Edo-period streets of Kawagoe also on the list. The choice is wide, but most of it lies within one corner of the country.

Both are safe, clean and easy with children, but Yokohama has more to keep them busy. The Cup Noodles Museum lets them design their own cup, Hakkeijima Sea Paradise combines an aquarium with rides, and Zoorasia is a spacious modern zoo. Tokyo Disneyland is about an hour away.

Kobe's offer is good but smaller. It has Oji Zoo, the aquarium at Suma beach and the Harborland waterfront, and its strength is the cable car ride up Rokko to a pasture farm.

Both are easy to navigate, with punctual trains and a single IC card for every line. Kobe's long, narrow layout makes it the simpler city to grasp: parallel rail lines run east to west, and Chinatown, the harbour and the arcades are a walk from Sannomiya.

Yokohama is more spread out, with Sankeien and the zoo needing a bus. In return, its harbour walk from Minato Mirai to Chinatown is flat all the way, and water buses cross the bay. In both cities the old foreign quarter on the hill means a climb.

Shopping is pleasant in both and comparable in depth, and serious shoppers from either city end up in Osaka or Tokyo. Kobe's distinctive buys are pearls from its historic pearl trade, Nada sake and leather shoes from Nagata, with Daimaru and boutiques in the old stone buildings of the former settlement.

Yokohama is at its best on Motomachi, a long street of leather goods and Western-tinged style, and around the dense department stores and underground arcades at Yokohama Station.

Kobe is slightly easier on the budget. Its business hotels rarely fill up, whereas Yokohama's rooms get dearer on summer weekends and when a big concert or convention is in town. Everyday eating is cheap in both, from ramen to set lunches.

The costs pile up differently. In Kobe it is the beef dinner, a night in an Arima ryokan and shinkansen day trips. In Yokohama it is admission charges at the family attractions, partly offset by free sights such as the Bluff houses and Yamashita Park.

Both are jazz cities with a port heritage and an autumn jazz festival, so the difference is in what surrounds that. Yokohama has more within its own limits: Minato Mirai Hall and its pipe organ, the Kanagawa Arts Theatre for opera and dance, and arenas for touring acts.

Kobe's classical hall is in nearby Nishinomiya, but it has something Yokohama lacks: the all-female Takarazuka Revue, playing in its home town forty minutes away. For kabuki, each city sends you to its larger neighbour.

For rest, Kobe is well ahead, because Arima Onsen, one of Japan's oldest hot-spring towns, lies within the city. Its rust-coloured kinsen and clear ginsen waters can be an afternoon's soak or an overnight stay in a ryokan.

Yokohama offers modern hot-spring bath complexes, including one on the waterfront, where people spend a whole evening with sauna and lounge. For a true mountain onsen you have to travel to Hakone, about an hour away. Its quiet places are Sankeien's ponds and the rose gardens on the Bluff.