Kobe Beef in Kobe

We started the day by getting a train to Kobe, where we went to a restaurant called Wakkoqu for lunch where we had a magnificent meal of Kobe beef. It is located near the railway station in what looks to be a normal food court in a mall, but this place had a very flash entrance and superb decor. It was not just a case of having a steak, it was a full experience where the chef was in front of us and personally took our order, cooked, and explained how to taste it, in terms of what to use the various seasonings and sauces for. The steak was without a doubt the most tender steak I have ever had; it almost melted in your mouth. It was a superb experience and I would very happily go back there.

Prior to lunch while we were looking at a map out on the street a gentlemen who I think had a very well educated Sydney accent helped us to find we a nice suburb of Kobe where they had experimented with western style homes, Kitano. As we wandered off in the direction he suggested we re-looked at the map a couple of blocks later whilst standing in the middle of an intersection, and then saw him about 30 meters away pointing which direction we should go.

We walked around this area for a while, took a couple of pictures and then had a Kazamidori cheese cake that looked and tasted great. It was very light.

Heading downtown from the Kitano area towards Chinatown we came across Hyogo House which has a magnificent frontage, tulips and Nikau palms (which I know Jane would love).

Chinatown looked like it have a superb array of foods. If we knew we weren’t going to be having Kobe beef shortly thereafter we would have enjoyed many of the delicacies.

Something we have seen a lot of throughout Japan has been decks for stacking cars. This is the highest one though that I’ve seen so far, the majority seem to be two high.

I decided it was time to get more money out from an ATM. We found that there were in fact very few machines around that would take a foreign Mastercard. After about five failed attempts we found a machine that worked in a convenience store. I do however also have a variety of backup options but this was my preference. It will be interesting to see whether we have further struggles like this in other parts of Japan.