I woke up this morning feeling much better than yesterday.  A bit blocked up but I hadn’t spend the night with my nose running, and after all the sleep yesterday, I was feeling rested.  Having said that, it was about 10.00 when I got up!  No point over-doing it.  Kobe is a very nice place and I will come here again to see the things I didn’t get to this time.

The first place we went to was the Ikuta Shrine.  It was a simple 5 minute walk from our hotel.  We prayed, and walked around the beautiful gardens there.  Some of the trees were massive!

After a good walk around, we made our way through town, and found a sweet spot to stop and have some morning tea.  We then walked through Kobe Motomachi, passing the first we saw of a particular chain of Kobe beef shops featuring Spiderman on the outside.  I’m not sure what the relationship is, but he made numerous appearances throughout the day, and always at the same chain.  We then made our way in to Chinatown, because no visit to a place is complete without a walk through Chinatown!

It was extremely crowded, but given it was 1.00 – lunch time – it’s no surprise.  Peking duck ranged from 150 yen to 500 yen.  The only thing we could see different between the two shops is the 150 yen ones used prawn crackers to make them look bigger.  YUCK!  (we guessed – we didn’t buy one).  And the 150 yen places had lines 5 metres long, and the 500 yen places didn’t have any lines.

We completed our walk through, and found a place to eat that we thought might be interesting – they were serving a “Kobe Special” – lobster grilled cheese.  Unfortunately after ordering we found out that it is a chain shop based out of Main    e, USA, and even the lobster was from Maine and not from Kobe bay!  What a waste.  Oh well.

On our way back to the hotel we managed to find the underground section which Ryu had told us about.  At first all the shops were closed – apparently that’s what happens on a Wednesday.  but as we got further in, we found all the open shops (food places) and it was amazing just how much was there!  Kaoru ordered some bokkakeyakisoba – fried noodle with konjac and meat.  For eat in, it was served like okonomiyaki, but we got it for take away and ate it back in our room.

We then had a bit of a sleep – I was feeling a bit tired and didn’t want to get sick again.  We passed the afternoon until dinner time.  Then showered and went out to meet one of my teachers, who actually told me what was good about Kobe in the first place – the reason we came here.  On the way we passed a “cat cafe” – basically a cafe for crazy cat ladies.  That’s right, for 650 yen (AU$7) you can spend 30 minutes surrounded by cats.  WTF???

We went to a sukiyaki restaurant for dinner that Shiomi-sensie knew of, and had, once again, an amazing meal.  The chef on Monday had told us that sukiyaki kobe beef is different to normal sukiyaki, because of the oil.  And you could really taste it!  The meat just melted in our mouth.

After an enjoyable meal we walked Shiomi-sensei to the train station, as she had about a 15 minute train trip home, and then came back home for a bath and bed.

 

 

Some photos from the day: