Days 14 & 15 - From Kobe to Shiga: Kobe Beef Extravaganza!

On the morning of Day 14, Lauren and I traveled to Shin-Osaka station with Devin to bid him farewell and catch our train to Kobe. We said goodbye, and then caught the 10:30 train to Kobe - which is a slower local train that takes about 1 hour, but gives a nice opportunity to appreciate the scenery.

We pulled into Sannomiya station in Kobe around 11:30, which gave us just enough time to walk to Honten Kobe Steak Ishida  and arrive just before our reservations at 12PM, where Dan and Chelle would join us for lunch. We first met Dan and Chelle in Japan four years ago, in the spring of 2015, when they were living in Thailand as expats but joined our group that was touring Japan for a week with Carl Rosa. We immediately hit it off with them, and spent a lot of that week together. Upon their return to Houston, we struck up a friendship and have seen them regularly ever since.

Lauren and I, preparing to enjoy our Kobe beef at Ishida

The meal at Ishida was served in the Teppanyaki style, with the entire meal cooked at the table on a flat top grill by a chef from the restaurant. Dan and I had both ordered the 180g dinner set, while Lauren and Chelle had the 150g lunch set. Our chef prepared the meat for us in two batches, allowing us to enjoy the leaner and more fatty parts of the steak separately. The steak was accompanied by two types of salt (both sea and Himalayan pink salt), pepper, wasabi, garlic chips and soy sauce. The meal was accompanied by a salad, fried rice, pickles and some grilled sprouts. 

Our chef at Ishida working on the fried rice.

The meat here was extremely tender and flavorful, but incredibly rich. It's hard to describe how different Kobe beef is from what we are used to, other than to state that the moment it touches your tongue it begins to emulsify and coat your tastebuds in beef fat and intense umami. While it's pricey, I strongly recommend that anyone who enjoys beef give it a try at some point, it's a special experience.

This fish was in front of a strange museum/cafe we walked past in Kobe on the way to Chinatown.

After our delicious and rich lunch, all four of us headed to our accommodations at the Hotel Okura to check in and put our bags down, before heading out to explore the town a little bit. We joined Dan and Chelle to walk around Kobe's version of China Town, which is a lively area of street food and restaurants all serving Chinese mainstays like soup dumplings, peking duck, and steam buns. Dan and Chelle tried a peking duck wrap, while Lauren and I tried a fresh strawberry on top of a mochi dessert that was filled with chocolate.

The knife shop we visited had a massive selection

We wandered around a little more before eventually reaching a shotengai (covered shopping street) that was rather quiet, but still had some interesting shops. Lauren and I stopped to pick up a nice paring knife at a little shop, but otherwise didn't spend any money. The four of us all stopped to see a street performer who had a trained Japanese monkey, but all left after a little while as seeing the little guy with a leash around his neck was a bit depressing.

An interesting name for a bar!

In the mood to relax, the four of us soon found ourselves in a bar called Teddy Bear Dining Darts Bar, which we entered mostly out of curiosity. We found it to be a rather quiet little joint with electronic darts games, fairly priced drinks and a quiet table in the corner where we could talk.

While I neglected to mention it earlier, before we left the Hotel, Dan and I had managed to cajole the ladies into another beef meal for dinner and secure reservations, so we all had to head out around 6:30 to be able to make our 8PM dinner at Daiei, a family owned and much more informal Kobe beef hangout.

Getting to Daiei was an adventure, requiring us to take a train and then walk about 15 minutes down some very quiet side streets. Once we arrived, we found the restaurant hopping with people, extremely busy and with amazing food aromas wafting from the door. After a very short wait, we were seated at our table and given an english menu. Dan and I each ordered 300g of Wagyu, instead of Kobe, as it was only 4200yen per 150g, a very reasonable price. The ladies ordered a 150g portion of beef to share, some scallops and shrimp, and we also ordered two plates of fried rice, assuming they were a reasonable size. Although we should have stopped there, we also saw a very limited offering of Oxtail Curry, which we all wanted to taste, so ordered that as well. When our food began to arrive, the locals were all staring and our table became quite the spectacle, as the Japanese patrons could not believe how much food the fat Gaijin could put away.

Our massive spread at Daiei

All jokes aside, the meat was delicious and we all enjoyed it thoroughly, though the fried rice turned out to be far too large, leaving one bowl entirely untouched. Stuffed, and very "beefed out", we all retired to the hotel to relax and chat in our hotel room, before eventually saying goodnight.

We all met up the following morning for breakfast, and then we said goodbye to Dan and Chelle for the last time in Japan, knowing we would soon catch up in Houston.

Lauren and I were bound for Shiga, a prefecture that is known for its rice farms and Omi Beef (Omi is the old name of Shiga). Lauren gave me the task of navigating so I asked Google to route us to Shiga station. Once we arrived, we got off the train and asked a taxi driver for a ride to our lunch at Matsukiya Honten, a very special Omi beef meal that only served 20 people per day and Lauren reserved months in advance. The driver informed us that was almost an hour's drive away, and that we would be better off catching the train back in the direction we had come from to Otsu station (where we were supposed to go). This would mean we would arrive 30 minutes late for our lunch, something that is not acceptable in Japan.

I'm sure those reading this can imagine how much trouble I was in with my wife at this point, but suffice to say I was not in her good books. We immediately hopped on a train back in the direction we had come from, while I attempted to stand in the very small area between train cars and call our hotel in Otsu, Inase B&B to have them try to push our reservation back. Against all odds, the restaurant agreed to push us back to 1PM, and after a frantic train and taxi ride, we walked in only 1 minute late.

Our meal at Matsukiya was amazing, consisting of three appetizer courses, including an Omi beef roll, some Omi beef slices, and a form of Omi beef tartare. This was followed by an Omi Beef Chawanmushi, which is a savory egg custard that is baked with the meat inside, before we received our entree which was about 120g of Omi beef that we would cook ourselves on a tabletop hotplate.

Our first appetizer at Matsukiya

Our second appetizer, all three were delicious!

This is the chawanmushi, with pieces of meat in the egg custard.

My portion of Omi beef, before grilling

Lauren, looking beautiful and waiting for our meat to cook

The Omi beef itself was perhaps the biggest surprise so far in Japan, as it had an intense beef flavor and nuttiness that other Kobe and Wagyu steak didn't. Where Kobe beef has a hint of sweetness to the fat, Omi beef is all savory umami goodness. The bites of steak, accompanied by a salt foam (very interesting), soy and ponzu, miso wasabi and garlic chips were delicious, tender and bursting with delicate yet intense beef flavor. We wrapped up our meal with an included dessert, and headed off to check in to our accommodations at Inase B&B.

Inase B&B is a fully renovated and beautiful 80 year old traditional Japanese home located in Otsu, a town about 10 minutes from Kyoto by train. Checking in we were given our room key, and shown the common living area with a kotatsu (heated blanket under a table), before heading back to our room "Bansho", which is the nicest room in the hotel. Lauren had booked this room months in advance because it offered a private restroom and bathing room, in addition to a tatami living area and bedroom with futons on a raised wooden platform.

A quick photo I snapped during our walk to the nearby conbini

We put our things down, and spent the next couple of hours catching up on blog posts, unpacking and relaxing before heading out to get some essentials at the conbini nearby. For dinner, we both wanted to keep it light, so we walked about 20 minutes north to a restaurant that Lauren had on her list, only to find it closed. We decided to admit defeat, and grabbed prepared food at the Conbini which cost us only $10US for meals for the both us. We carried our food back to the hotel to heat up in the common area microwave, and ate it for dinner before retiring for the night to relax in our room and watch some TV together.