Hyōgo

Day 23

A rather mundane day today as we just left shiga and travelled to Kobe city in Hyogo prefecture. The journey wasn’t too long only about 2 hours except we had to stand for about an hour and a half as there were just no seats as it was like being on the London tube during rush hour. With our massive backpacks I’m sure you can imagine just how hellish that was!!

Once we arrived we dropped our bags off at our hostel and wondered around the Kobe harbour land and the huge shopping malls they have with every brand you could ever think of and a bunch of brands that we will never be able to pronounce! We then finally got to try the famous Teppanyaki! This is where you basically cook your own meat on a grill in the centre of your table, and we didn’t just cook any meat- we cooked Wagyu beef!! Kobe is famous for wagyu beef and is considered one of the highest grade Wagyu beef breeds in Japan. It certainly lived up to this high expectation as it was DELICIOUS! It just melted in my mouth and was to die for. Of course, it’s also a really fun experience to try out teppanyaki and very rewarding when it tastes so good!!

After this we wondered around for a little while longer and then headed back to our hostel for an early night.

Day 24
We started off today with toast and coffee before heading to the chocolate museum. When Jacob told me there was a chocolate museum I said we absolutely HAVE to go, and not really knowing what to expect I guess it does exactly as it says on the tin! There were floor to ceiling glass cabinets of chocolate. Chocolate from all over the world but there was no particular description or theme to the museum just walls covered in chocolate. As we moved through to the next room it felt like walking into a fever dream. Dresses made out of chocolate wrappers filled the first half of the room and they were actually very impressive. Moving into the second half of the room was a photo booth which people were queuing for to take pictures with a fake giant chocolate bar. The people taking pictures were taking it very seriously with different poses and different props it was bizarre, so we took the mandatory photo and then ended up in the shop where we bought a bar each which were delicious!

Feeling slightly surreal walking out of the museum we saw a sign for the “art aquarium” and we were very intrigued and rightfully so! After securing a ticket you walk through to the first room with art of fish and the ocean lining the wall and projected colours on the ceiling like an interactive immersive art exhibition!! Amongst this was tanks of fish, frogs, stingrays, salamanders, and giant tortoise! It was seriously bizarre, there was another room with a fake forest and kangaroos in? Just when I thought Japan couldn’t surprise me much more and that I was used to the Japanese artistic flair I end up being speechless! Sadly, it’s apparent that the Japanese don’t have the same level of animal protection or consideration as other countries as some of the tanks were so small it was quite sad actually.

On the walk to our last activity of the day we made a quick stop at the earthquake memorial park which was honouring those who had lost their life in the 1995 earthquake which took the lives of over 5,000 people and read about the response and the severity of damage that it had done to Kobe city in particular.

Our last activity of the day was silver ring making!! This was SO much fun. You start by choosing what kind of ring you want and want design and then you start sanding down your ring and then with a little machiene you polish them and then to get the desired pattern you hit it with a hammer. I have to say that Jacob was more of a natural at it than me but I’m still chuffed with how my ring turned out and it was really fun and in a very small family run shop which was lovely.Read more