Did I just pay $155 for a steak dinner?

I started out the day in Fukuyama and I slept about as well as I thought I would. The shinkansen trains started before 6AM and they woke me up a couple of times. The hotel full of doctors was about as quiet as you’d expect, so that wasn’t a problem.

Breakfast was even fancier than I’d expected. As soon as I sat down they asked if I wanted a custom-made omelet (of course I did) and they even had French toast. Here’s what I picked out, though.

Quite worth the whatever-the-heck I said yesterday. Oh, and I did end up hitting the bar. It was a little weird and brightly lit, and they kept wanting to mix different cocktails, but it was fine.

I got on the train for Kobe and went looking for my hotel. Of course I kept running into Chinese tourists who were either blocking my way to the trains (and I missed one because of them) or generally just getting in my way. All the way from Shin-Kobe station, off the subway to Sannomiya, and my hotel ended up being next to Chinatown! That’s some planning on my part.

I ended up doing the whole wandering around thing like I usually do. I went up to the old foreigner’s residences but didn’t go into any of the buildings. I was thinking, “Who cares about a bunch of fake-European houses from the early 20th century where the round-eyes used to live?” I did make it to the tippy-top where there was a shrine.

Oddly enough there was a classical choral concert going on as well.The view was pretty great.

After some more hilly walks I made it back to Shin-Kobe station (where I arrived earlier in the morning) where the “Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum” is located. They have recorded explanations in several different languages that they’ll lend you. It started out slow talking about stone vs metal axes in the oooolden days and moved onto talking about the carpentry of temples. I was pretty fascinated and spent a couple of hours there (I have a thing for temples and shrines after all) but I never did make it through all the recordings. The woman at the front desk laughed when I mentioned that. There was a live demonstration of Japanese hand planes (pull planes), with two foreign examples (push planes), and a Japanese spear plane! And after the demo you could try them all yourself!

(Woodworking nerds will understand how cool this all was.)

Then it was back to the hotel, and I’m kind of disappointed. It’s twice as much as the fancy place yesterday and it’s not as fancy. It’s probably trendy and it’s plenty fine, but I usually don’t pay this much for a room so I was expecting something fancier. I suppose I’m just being picky.

I asked the front desk what I should eat and they said, “Kobe beef!” We get all sorts of things called “Kobe beef” back in Portland, and it certainly isn’t. In fact, there’s almost no beef allowed into the US from Japan. In any case, I had to do it. And I paid $155 for the privilege.

The fat in Kobe beef melts at a lower temperature, so it feels like it melts in your mouth. It lacks the crunchy outside of properly grilled Matsuzaka beef so it’s still just my second-favorite.

The chef was excellent. Look at the care he takes in frying the garlic to go with the steak.

When I asked him if it was OK to take pictures, he asked me if I wanted him to take a picture of me! Why not? I don’t have any other pictures of me on the trip.

So I’d definitely recommend Moriya. I was told that the Chinese tourists love it there too and you have to get reservations on the weekend or for lunch. Tuesday dinner wasn’t that big a deal but boy it was tasty.

So onto my last two stops. Four days in Osaka and four days in Tokyo. The shopping for my mom and my sister starts soon!