"Kongō" hosted the Duke of Genoa when he visited Japan in late 1879. The ship was assigned to the Small Standing Fleet in 1885 and made port visits to Port Arthur and Chefoo in China and Jinsen in Korea the following year. She became a training ship in 1887 for the Kure Naval District. Together with her sister ship , "Kongō" sailed from Shinagawa, Tokyo on 13 August 1889 on a training cruise to the Mediterranean with cadets from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, returning on 2 February 1890. On 5 October, the sister ships departed Shinagawa for Kobe to pick up the 69 survivors of the wrecked , transporting them to their homeland at Constantinople, Turkey, on 2 January 1891, after which the ships' officers were received by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The ships also carried a class of naval cadets on this mission. On the return voyage, the two corvettes made port at Piraeus where they were visited by King George I of Greece and his son, Crown Prince Constantine. Making stops at Alexandria, Port Said, Aden, Colombo, Singapore and Hong Kong, the sister ships arrived at Shinagawa on 10 May where "Kongō" resumed her training duties.