Day 95: Kobe Beef In Kobe
Day one of our JR Pass. We decided to go to Kobe for the day to eat Kobe beef. It's a thing I like to do – eat/drink the namesake – for example, we had Bordeaux in Bordeaux, Parma ham in Parma, Napoli pizza in Napoli and now Kobe beef in Kobe. It seems so luxurious and crazy to go all the way to Kobe for lunch but when you have a JR Pass you can actually do this kind of thing.
About to board our Shinkansen to Kobe. We had reserved seats but it turns out there was a miscommunication and the ticket guy gave us tickets for the week before, which was a bit of a pain. Halfway through the trip we had to embarrassingly move from what we thought were our seats into a very busy unreserved section.
Train snacks! Our shinkansen left so early that the ekiben (train bento boxes) stores weren't open so we had to make do with bakery treats. This katsu sando was probably one of the best ones I've ever had.
We also found a place that did ekiben so that was breakfast sorted.
OMG shinkansen themed ekiben!
Made it to Kobe!
We'd booked lunch at Wakkoqu, a Kobe beef restaurant which had good reviews. It was tucked away in this depressing mall near to the station but was pretty full when we showed up.
The glorious steak. They sit it in front of you for a while so you can marvel in its marbled glory.
The starter: cream of mushroom soup.
He cuts of the fatty bit and uses that to cook with.
The first cut of steak which you dip into the various sauces. Plain old salt was actually my favourite.
We paid a bit extra for the garlic fried rice. It was good but I never go nuts for fried rice.
Ice cream for dessert. The lady next to us got a special birthday dessert and started crying, actually it was more bawling when she got it. She was so touched (and maybe a little boozed?) that she started crying uncontrollably.
After lunch we decided to walk around Kobe to see what was around. Truth be told, there wasn't all that much but I did see this guy.
And a statue of Elvis who plays songs every half hour or something.
Little girl waving good bye to the ships.
We accidentally found ourselves in Chinatown. If we weren't so full of steak I would have 100% done some snacking.
Before jumping back on the Shinkansen, we headed up the cable car to get a view of Kobe. It's not cheap but you can see a waterfall on the way up and once you get to the top there are some nice gardens to hang out in.
Chasing waterfalls.
Heading back "home" to Tokyo.
