Kobe - 神戸市

Unfortunately I didn't meet the basketball player Kobe, but I did visit the city Kobe! Maybe the second thing that pops up in your head when you hear Kobe is Kobe beef. This was the main reason we came to Kobe, but we were pleasantly suprised with the amount of things there was to do. Kobe is about an hour southwest of Osaka. The first thing we visited was Chinatown.

When I told some of my friends (well one friend in particular... if ya know who ya know who) that I went to Chinatown, they wondered why there's a Chinatown in Japan. The Chinatown area included 3-4 different streets next to a shopping arcade. It was really nice seeing the racks of cooked duck and other food I usually see in an Asian grocery store back home. Since it's pretty small, we started walking towards the water when we saw people waiting outside a store. When we passed by, it turned out to be a French bakery, and there was a line because only 5 people could fit in the whole store at once (rip Japan and their small spaces). So being the suckers we are, we ended up hopping in line to wait for the bread. It was actually really good, and not too expensive so that was a nice suprise. (side note: me and my friends actually believe the signs that say "rated #1 ice cream in Japan" so we always end up waiting in long lines lol)

Look at dese cute lil buns hehe

We walked to the port area of Kobe. Here we saw Kobe tower (which had a fee to go in so we didn't go up). And closer to the water there was a sign that said in huge white block letters "BE KOBE", so of course we had to take a picture with it. While walking there I saw what I think is the fanciest Starbucks I have ever seen (so so fancy, like matte black fancy :0). When we got to the letters, we were kinda taken aback because in front of them was a line of people waiting to take their picture. This is something I love (and miss) about Japan, everything is so organized and everyone is so considerate. Whereas in Toronto you couldn't get a picture with the letters without random strangers in it, Japanese people waited and took turns to get a cute group picture.

Da beautis Starbs

Rip the photobombing birb

After we got the picture, we walked to the nearby mall. It was nothing that we hadn't really seen before so we didn't spend too long here. We decided to walk back to the station we came from, and while we were walking we saw some bikes that you can pay to use (like the red JUMP bikes that have been popping up everywhere). They were really cheap as well - ¥500 for the whole day, if I'm remembering correctly. However, since it was kind of late to get our money's worth we deicided just to walk. We didn't make it to all of the different places in Kobe, but there was a lot more than what we did (including a ropeway (that cost money so obvious no lol), a zoo, a couple hiking trails and more).

My friends and I walked around the station in Kobe for a while, looking at the restaurants and also checking Yelp and Google maps for recommendations. We wanted to go to a yakiniku type place, but it was way too busy and we were starving since we didn't eat to save up and savor the beef more. We ended up settling with this one restaurant with a huge cow statue in front of it (turned out it was a chain restaurant). The waiteress recommended, since there were 4 of us, to get 4 plates of different grades: 1 plate of the lowest, 2 of the middle, and 1 of the highest, which is what we ended up ordering. I'm not too sure what different parts of the cow were associated with the different grades. When we got the plates, we all tried it in order of grade. Even the lowest grade was really good. But once we got to the highest grade, the lowest didn't taste as good ahah. Overall, the beef was good, but we didn't think it was worth the price (I think we paid about $40 per person). We were thinking that maybe it was just the place we picked since it was a chain.

After dinner we wanted to see the port at night. So according to Google and Yelp there was a building where we could go to one of the top floors for free and see the water. The view was pretty nice, but Kobe tower was blocked by the tall buildings T_T . On the opposite side (of the water), we could see the ropeway, and there were lights that spelled out KOBE on the mountain side.

When in Asia...