Kobe

On our second day in Japan we decided to visit the nearby town of Kobe. The train ride was about an hour long and we arrived in Kobe just in time for lunch. While Kobe is famous for their beef, the price of Kobe beef in Japan was a little outside our budget. Instead, we followed the advice of our Lonely Planet and stopped at an “atmospheric place” called Kintoki that is “popular with locals”. We were not expecting that it would be only locals. You know that classic scene in Westerns were the stranger walks into the bar and the music and talking stops and everyone just stares at the newcomer? That was basically what happened. We walked in, and the whole restaurant simultaneously stopped and stared. There was no English menu and we weren’t sure how to go about ordering. There were several dishes laid out on a counter near the kitchen. The dishes were lined up in rows and had prices at the top of each row. We finally figured out that we could walk up to the row and grab what we wanted. We chose a plate of tempura and a plate of vegetables to share. Both were good, but we were still hungry. We saw the woman at the next table eating a bowl of rice with chicken and egg that looked delicious, but that wasn’t on the table of food. We got our waitresses attention and pointed to the bowl of rice indicating that we wanted to order that. She brought us more green tea. We pointed again to the bowl of rice. She brought out one. We decided to just share and eat a snack later.
From there it was off to the Hakutsuru Brewery and Museum. The Brewery offers free tours of the museum that explain both the traditional and modern methods of making sake. We got a little lost finding the museum, but there were a couple of very helpful locals who kept us on track. We arrived at the museum just in time to take the tour, which was very interesting. Unfortunately we arrived after the sake tasting area had closed. We bought a couple of things from the shop and headed back to the center of town.
Kobe doesn’t have a lot of sights, but we did explore the local China Town area. It pretty much looks like the China Town that they have in Boston, New York, Bangkok, and every major city throughout the globe. There was a fantastic little tea shop, with dozens of loose-leaf teas from China and Japan, but after an hour of wondering we bought some dumplings for dinner and headed home.