Kobe, Japan

Yesterday and today marked the second time on our trip that the ship stopped at Kobe making this our fourth day in Kobe. The last time, we had a very long tour so we decided that we would pass on a tour today, and instead, take the free shuttle from the ship to Chinatown for a day on our own. ( kind of strange to have a Chinatown in the middle of a Japanese city, don't you think?)
Chinatown is located on a 1.5 km street tucked in between modern buildings of Kobe. The entrance gate was very colourful and lots of people were posing for pictures before passing through. These included thousands of students who, again, because of the season, are on excursions at this time of year. It is great to see so many youngsters, in so many different places, all neatly dressed in their school uniforms, being so very polite, but laughing and smiling and having so much fun together.
The street was lined on both sides with food vendors with large, colourful billboard like menus, lanterns and signs and packed with people coming and going. Because it was raining lightly, most people were carrying opened umbrellas, which made navigating the foot traffic somewhat challenging.
Our original idea was to find a restaurant that served authentic Kobe beef and have that for our lunch but because the prices were extremely high with minimums of over $100 per person and because the signs and menus were all in Japanese it was almost impossible to figure out what you would be getting for what price. So on to Plan B and look for other alternatives.
We were attracted to one vendor with a rotating roasting oven containing five or six ducks, which looked very much like Peking duck. The husband carved the skin and the meat into small shreds and passed it on to his wife. She then assembled it, along with shredded cabbage, into a rice paper wrap, topped off with a delicious thick, dark sauce. It cost a approximately four dollars and it tasted delicious. Further, along the way we bought a skewer of three chunks of deep fried chicken at a price of about four dollars which we also shared.
After a visit to a public toilet, and yet again another interesting toilet control panel, we ventured bravely into a small, very Japanese restaurant. It was a bit smoky because of the barbecuing of all the meats, but it just made it more authentic. We both had Japanese tea and shared a miso soup. Lee had a small donburi bowl with grilled chicken and Don had deep fried chicken on rice. There were no other tourists in the restaurant and it was fun because we sat at the counter behind which the three cooks were doing the all the barbecuing and cooking.
After lunch, we headed back to the main entrance and along the way saw a very colourful pagoda surrounded by people taking pictures of each other. We asked a group of young Japanese girls if they would take a picture of us which they did and we in turn, offered to take a picture of them, and then, in the blink of an eye, airdropped the pictures to their own phones, giggled a lot, waved, and said goodbye.
Back at the entrance, we turned left for one block and came to another long narrow street but this time with more modern boutique type shops. We stopped at a 100 Yen store, (which was like our Dollarama stores) and Lee bought two pairs of reader glasses for $1.10 each.
Don turned around and went back to the shuttle meeting place while Lee continued a bit longer and finally returned to the bus for the short trip back to the ship.
It was a very exciting day for us to be more up close and personal with the Japanese people, food and culture and a very pleasant change from all the shrines and temples that we have been visiting.
After some quiet time on our return, we went to Sette Marie, the Italian restaurant (which I call the meatball restaurant just to irritate Heather). The plan was to just have a pizza because we were still full from our afternoon lunch, but when we arrived, the restaurant was full so we went downstairs to a lounge for a drink before they called us for dinner. Unfortunately, it turned out they didn’t have pizza on the menu so we dug into the smallest meals we could find.
Following dinner, we went to the theatre for another fantastic show featuring music of internationally known singers like ABBA, Ricky Martin, Shania Twain, Elton John and many others.
And so, after a great day, it was off to bed.もっと詳しく