KOBE -- In what its supporters hope is not an ill omen, Kobe's new airport opened in fog early Thursday morning.
The 310 billion yen airport, financed almost entirely by the city of Kobe, is the Kansai region's third, after Itami airport and Kansai International Airport, both in Osaka Prefecture.
Built on an artificial island off Kobe, the new airport will handle 27 round-trip flights a day to Tokyo's Haneda airport, Sapporo, Sendai, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Niigata and Naha, Okinawa Prefecture.