{"id":11914,"date":"2026-11-01T05:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T13:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11914"},"modified":"2026-11-01T05:00:51","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T13:00:51","slug":"japan-fall-2026-day-12-kobe-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11914","title":{"rendered":"Japan Fall 2026: Day 12 (Kobe too)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was another nice day. Slightly cooler than yesterday but still pretty nice. We started off at the \u201cold coffee shop\u201d and it was packed with old dudes reading their racing forms. I\u2019m guessing horse racing is a weekend thing? I got the croquette monsieur which started out a little bland but tasted better as I ate more. I think there\u2019s egg salad in there and the first piece didn\u2019t have much of it. But maybe the weekend chef is a little more sparing with the salt.<\/p>\n

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We walked around Sannomiya and the only crazy crowds we saw were in Chinatown. I wanted to confirm that Kobe\u2019s is much larger than Nagasaki\u2019s (which is only a city block) and it is much larger. The long line for the famous pork buns looked 100 people deep and didn\u2019t seem to move very fast so I punted. We walked down to the end of Motomachi and back to the Daimaru department store where we ate at the Kyoto restaurant that wasn\u2019t on the restaurant floor. The restaurant floor was pretty spendy but the single restaurants on other floors were reasonable. I had the chicken and mochi soba because I didn\u2019t think it was going to be this large.<\/p>\n

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Mariko had the yamakake soba.<\/p>\n

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After that we went looking for the coffee counter we last went to about 15 years ago? It was still great. I had an incredibly strong cup of coffee in a beautiful cup. It\u2019s in Sanchika, on the slope above the Misudo.<\/p>\n

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We also went and checked out the restaurant area because I think that\u2019s where the Japan Eat guy tries all the restaurants. It looks nothing like what I thought it would look like. It\u2019s old and dingy like the southern end of Umeda and the Daiichi through Daisan buildings.<\/p>\n

Then it was back to Umeda.<\/p>\n

We walked around a bit trying to decide where to go for dinner and ended up on the restaurant floor of the Hankyu department store. I was in search of chicken nanban and started off with a cream soda. It wasn\u2019t quite as radioactive green as I\u2019ve seen in the past.<\/p>\n

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There was a lot of chicken in my chicken nanban. It wasn\u2019t my favorite because it didn\u2019t have the sweet sauce and the tartar sauce had a slightly bitter taste. It was good, just now what I was expecting.<\/p>\n

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Mariko had the tempura udon and the tempura was very good. Not too oily.<\/p>\n

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We both got the set with a little soft ice cream at the end. Probably more like ice milk but it was a nice way to end dinner.<\/p>\n

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And that\u2019s about it for the day. I did stop by Kinokuniya to get a couple of calendars. I can\u2019t count on the free ones from my insurance guy any more (he retired and the new guy doesn\u2019t seem to send them out) and some of the other ones quit coming. As my dad would say, that\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was another nice day. Slightly cooler than yesterday but still pretty nice. We started off at the \u201cold coffee shop\u201d and it was packed with old dudes reading their racing forms. I\u2019m guessing horse racing is a weekend thing? I got the croquette monsieur which started out a little bland but tasted better as I ate more. I think there\u2019s egg salad in there and the first piece didn\u2019t have much of it. But maybe the weekend chef is a little more sparing with the salt. We walked around Sannomiya and the only crazy crowds we saw were in Chinatown. I wanted to confirm that Kobe\u2019s is much larger … Continue reading Japan Fall 2026: Day 12 (Kobe too)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11915,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914\/revisions\/11915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}