Keihanshin

The GDP in Osaka–Kobe is $681 billion as measured by PPP as of 2015[update], making it one of the world's most productive regions, a match with Paris and London.

[6] The name Keihanshin is constructed by extracting a representative kanji from Kyoto (京都), Osaka (大阪), and Kobe (神戸).

The Japan Statistics Bureau defines a Major Metropolitan Area or MMA (大都市圏) as a set of municipalities where at least 1.5% of the resident population aged 15 and above commute to school or work in a designated city (defined as the core area).

In the 2005 census, the designated cities used to define the Keihanshin MMA were Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto.

This definition assigns a Metropolitan Employment Area to the following cities of the Keihanshin region: Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Himeji, and Wakayama.

The fairly centrally located Osaka International Airport, laid over the border between the cities of Itami and Toyonaka, serves primarily domestic routes.

Main rail terminals in the cities include, Umeda/Osaka, Namba, Tennoji, Sannomiya, and Kyoto.

All trains on the two Shinkansen lines stop at Shin-Ōsaka Station and provide connections to other major cities in Japan.

The Tokaido Shinkansen offers service to the east, stopping in such cities as Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama and Tokyo.

The Sanyo Shinkansen offers service to the west, stopping in such cities as Kobe, Okayama, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka.

There are also numerous Limited Express services which operate on conventional lines, but are designed for comfortable long-distance travel.

Lower ticket prices also encourages usage, though they are more expensive than the regular/commuter trains which operate on the same lines.

Many lines in Keihanshin accept either ICOCA or PiTaPa contactless smart cards for payment.

Compared with other urban regions of the world, the agglomeration of Osaka-Kobe is the ninth largest economy, in terms of gross metropolitan product at purchasing power parity (PPP), in 2015 according to a study by the Brookings Institution.