Japan Revisited - Kobe

Day 5

What do you associate Kobe with? Yes most of us would mention beef and Kobe Beef is famous the world over which is one of the must do for us is a Kobe Beef meal.😜

No today we are not rushing over to Kobe instead our first stop is Akashi, a small town after Kobe to explore the Unotana Fish Market. This place is famous for octopus.

Yummy Octopus

Sun Dried Octopus

After our jaunt in the fish market we headed to Kobe to have the so much talked about beef for lunch. We have decided to have it in a restaurant recommended by locals but was disappointed because it was close. Then our second choice is SteakLand which is very much publicized in the internet.

Queuing outside Steakland.

When we arrived at the restaurant there was already a long queue and we joined in the queue to get a seat. After awhile some people came to the back of the queue and ask us to follow them to another location. I was suspicious so I asked why? They just replied "follow, follow, same" with their very limited English. So without much of a choice we followed them to the back lane into another building up an elevator, When the elevator door open it was a large dining hall and several group of people were dining. They looked like they were from group tours having a taste of Kobe beef en masse with catered menus. We were not pleased with the way we were treated we left to find another place to have our Kobe beef. There are many Kobe beef restaurant in Kobe so do not be mislead that SteakLand is the only place.

This is where we had our Kobe Beef, Kobe beef Grilled beef Kobe Tanryu Higashimon ten, it is a member of the Kobe Beef Tourist Association that guarantee that their beef is authentic.

Outside the restaurant, no queue 😉

There was another plate of Kobe beef which we forgot to take a photo because of our eagerness to enjoy such tender and very yummy beef 😜

Having lost so much time in getting lunch we headed straight to  Nada Sake District instead of visiting Chinatown -Nankinmachi so we have forgo a place of interest in our itinerary. In Nada sake district we visited the Hakutsuru Sake Museum.

The Hakutsuru Sake Museum

Barrels of Sake

The Fermenting Wooden Vat

Different rice grades for sake making.

Adding yeast to the rice in a special room.

Starting Vats.

Bulk packaging.

Different type of packaging.

Me moonlighting!

It was a very interesting and educational visit to the sake museum and we get to sample all the different types of sake too! Yum ... it was really good.

Next destination is Hiroshima.