I’ve really been putting off my journal entries for too long. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten the majority of the things I wanted to write about, but I’m going to attempt at pulling out the highlights of my side trips in Japan. Starting off with – Kobe.

I went to Kobe back in January when my mom and sis were visiting. If I was posting in chronological order, this entry should go right after my USJ post, as I visited Kobe the day after. Kobe is definitely one of my favourite port cities. I’m not sure why it took me so long to visit, but I’m glad I finally made it out.

Early in the morning we took a train from Osaka towards Sannomiya Station, which is the main station in Kobe. It was a really gorgeous winter day and we enjoyed the walk uphill towards Kitano Ijinkan, which are the old foreign residences built when Kobe was a main trading port. There are about 30 houses which were preserved from that era and many are open to the public as museums.

While I had wanted to go inside all the houses, the admission fees were quite expensive. All the houses sell individual tickets, or you can buy them as a combination package. We ended up buying the cheapest package, which allowed us to visit three houses: England House, Yokan Nagaya (France House) and Ben’s House. I really enjoyed England House because so much of it was devoted to one of my favourite characters – Sherlock Holmes.

Since we didn’t spend any money visiting the other houses, we could only peek through the gates to see places like the Former Chinese Consulate and the Uroko House. There’s also the Kitano Tenman Shrine right at the top of the hill which is worth a visit. As you come down, there’s a little centre square where they have shops and people selling art on the street. It was a really nice area and I would recommend making the climb uphill just for the view. (At least the public washrooms and the Starbucks down the street are free. I would check those out cause they were pretty special too!)

We spent most of the morning in the Kitano area. It was pretty late when we made it back to the station for lunch. I hadn’t really looked at places to eat prior to visiting Kobe, but I found a restaurant online called Red Rock which is popular. The restaurant is super tiny and line up for it starts about 20m down from the entrance. We ended up waiting in line for about 30 minutes before we finally made it inside the restaurant. They don’t have an extensive menu, but most people order either their roast beef don (590 yen) or their steak don (690 yen). For that price, I would totally line up everyday to eat at their restaurant. The food was amazing!

Later that afternoon we spent time exploring the Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum. It was a somewhat somber experience. When you first go inside they direct you into this super dark theatre to watch the footage of the earthquake with really intense audio-visual effects. I was already creeped out by the eerily dark theatre, so the whole experience of sitting through a 7 minute film was very unsettling for me. If I had the option I would have skipped it. Otherwise, I found the rest of the museum to be both informative and commemorative as the same time.

After we left the museum it was slowly getting dark outside. We took a walk towards Kobe’s Chinatown, then finally made it to the Port of Kobe. It was cool seeing Kobe Port Tower lit up in the distance. For dinner we ended up at a teppanyaki restaurant where we ordered the specialty, Kobe beef. I’m not sure how I managed to eat so much beef in one day, but I was happily full. After that we called it a night and headed back to Osaka.