Disturbed by the Osaka overload, we decided on a day-trip. I woke up 5:30-ish, i.e. way too early, but while not ideal it at least got us through the Osaka Station ahead of the crazy rush hour. Had a quick breakfast in the station of a surprisingly delicious curry/rice dish with some nice strong coffee, all for like five bucks.
Our destination was a certain city you might have heard of… hint: it has to do with beef… yup we’re freaking going to Kobe Japan!!! Cows, watch out, we’re not exactly coming to massage y’all!
Arriving at famous Kobe was very exciting. As it happens, there is a big national park right next to the Kobe train station, replete with waterfalls and cable cars, so of course we had to do the climb. Robert’s online guide to the park said that, due to the very strenuous hike up, everyone should take the cable car up to the peak…. naturally, we chose violence and hiked up the whole way. At the very top, Robert consulted his fitness app and announced we’d done over 1000 feet of vert! Pro tip: be careful hiking with a guy who rounds his vert to the nearest thousanth of feet. And obviously, once we’d made it to the top, we then needed to somehow return to the bottom… apparently we totaled 25K steps on the day.
A few Japanese women hiked past us while we were hydrating, one said in English, “Hello!” and then, “Have a nice day!” I called back literally the only Japanese phrase I had learned, “arigato!” which meant “thank you”—disarmed, she whipped around, gave us a huge surprised smile and a thumbs up, while the other ladies tittered. Once again I appreciated the axiom that when traveling, even one foreign phrase learned is better than nothing.
We finally got down from the heights of the national park, and entered Kobe itself.
We both loved Kobe. Very calm, very quiet, very Japanese. It was our favorite town so far. Even better, there were no tourists to be seen! We did discover many picturesque shrines, and gigantic persimmon trees which were perhaps 500 years old (I googled them later haha).
After a while we managed to find Robert’s well-researched Number One Kobe beef restaurant! But it wasn’t open yet, so we had to wander around for another (enjoyable) forty-five minutes. When it finally opened, they unfortunately had to politely decline us, being completely booked.
Undeterred, we marched up to Robert’s option Number Two! But, mysteriously, it was closed, with no explainations. But Robert is nothing if not prepared: in his notes he had documented a sister restaurant for option Number One, so it was back up the hill to the ANA Hotel attached to the train station. This restaurant took a lot of time to find, but the results were the same: they said couldn’t seat us either.
Sheesh! You actually get to freakin Kobe Japan and you can’t find a place to eat!! However, seeing our sad expressions, they finally admitted that in a mere forty-five minutes, they could seat us! So we were back to killing time wandering about, and we explored this strangely empty mall-like space in the hotel. It got more and more bizarre, with a kitty-based computerized play-room, then a kitty-based room of figurines, giant kitties, etc.
Next up: finally eating Kobe beef in Kobe Japan!!!!
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