TacoCat’s Travels #33 (Japan Ver1): Happy New Year! 🎆
Hey Steemit!
If you missed the last few posts, I'm recounting my first trip to Japan way back at the end of 2015! So in the previous post, we took a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka and explored the famous Dotonbori area for a little bit!
This post will be a pretty short one, because we were pretty tired from the previous day we woke up late and only had half a day to explore Kobe. But it's okay because we just celebrated the New Year and not many shops were open anyway.
1 January 2016. Friday.
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Or 明けましておめでとうございます (Akemashiteomedetōgozaimasu)!
We stayed up watching videos and before we knew it it was 2016! We celebrated with Yakults in our nice and comfortable Airbnb in Osaka.
By the time we decided what to do that day and left the house it was 3 PM! Oops. 😅 We figured it was a holiday so there'd be not much stuff to see anyways. Either that, or there'll be plenty of people at the malls. Both of which were probably true.
We just took a relaxing stroll to the station, enjoying the nice weather. 😊
I really like the art they did on these stairs!
Since we had the JR pass we could take the train to anywhere we wanted so we decided to take the shinkansen again but to Kobe this time!
The shinkansen is super fast and it takes just 13 minutes for us to get from Shin-Osaka station to Shin-Kobe station!
We hadn't had lunch yet so we decided to try one of the bentos from the station that everyone gets.
Tbh it didn't really taste that great. Sukiya and Matsuya's beef bowls (don) are sooo much better. I think that was the first and only time we ever bought a bento from the train station.
But we didn't have much choice then so, bottoms up I guess!
The view from the shinkansen is pretty nice. In Singapore most of our trains now (or at least the newer ones) are underground since we don't have much land. And anyway most of the passengers are always busy looking at their phones so I guess it works out. But it's always nice to take a step back and enjoy the scenery even if you've seen it a thousand times before.
It's pretty difficult to get a clear shot of the scenery while the train is going at 300 km/h but I did my best.
"Enjoying" our bento. Sorry for the blur.
After alighting from the shinkansen we had to take the subway to get to the main part of Kobe.
The train was completely empty! I guess everyone's celebrating New Years' elsewhere.
We walked along the streets and arrived at Kobe Motomachi!
Kobe Motomachi is one of the leading shopping streets in Kobe and is said to showcase Kobe's quality features so we figured it's a good start to see what Kobe is like.
I didn't really take many pictures of the shopping street because 1) many of the shops were closed due it being New Years' Day, and 2) it pretty much looked like any other shopping street (aka shotengai). But here's what it looks like:
Source: temporarilylost.com
So I did some reading and I found out that this shopping street is actually more than 140 years old! It "formed" during the Edo period when 220 houses and buildings were lined side by side and it developed even more as people gathered after the opening of the Port of Kobe. It was renamed as “Motomachi Street” on May 20, 1874.
The whole street is approximately 1.2 km and there are about 300 stores along the street. 20 of which actually have more than 100 years of history! Many of these long-established stores were novelty and forefront businesses such as western confectionery, clothes, photography and beauty salons at that time and it proves that Motomachi was filled with an enterprising spirit. That spirit has been passed on and a variety of new stores have been opened, making the town "New and Retrospective" where new and old stores harmonise together.
I guess this was what it kinda looked like back in its heyday.
Source: hippostcard.com
I studied Japanese Business and we actually learned about the decline of shotengais/shopping streets and how they were losing business due to the advent of shopping malls and now even those are threatened with the growing popularity of e-commerce. A lot of shopping streets in Japan nowadays are struggling due to these advancements. We'd always hear of older shopkeepers lamenting the days when they'd spend their time catching up with their regular customers, but I guess that's life huh. Cities develop, traditions get lost to commercialism and globalisation; all we can do is adapt and reminisce the days of old. 🙁
Well that got deep. Anyway we walked along Motomachi for a while and eventually reached Nankinmachi (Kobe’s Chinatown)!
As expected there were only a few shops open that day, but there was surprisingly quite many tourists.
Turns out everyone was crowding around this Kobe Beef stall so we waited for the crowd to clear out a little so we could get a taste too!
The only thing I knew about Kobe at the time was that it was famous for its beef so I had to try it!
We went up close to see how the meat was prepared. It smelled so goood!
Here's a short video!
We received our order and I was so excited!
I forget how much it was but I'm pretty sure that was the cheapest option they had. It tasted really good, especially with their special sauce!
It was getting dark and after having that snack we walked along back to Kobe station, and found another beef stall along the way!
I'm pretty sure this restaurant is a chain because I've seen this spiderman in Osaka as well. We decided to get a small portion of their beef to try too!
I think this beef wasn't as good as the first one, maybe because it was too chewy or fatty. Either way it was still a good snack.
After that, we headed back to the station and took the shinkansen once again back to Osaka.
Another small snack for the train ride!
We walked around Osaka and went to check out the malls and found this nice place with Christmas lights!
After that, we walked to Yodobashi Umeda to see some games and stuff.
We're not really gundam fans but it's cool to look at I guess.
I always wanted Mario figurines but I know they'll just end up collecting dust so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They had these really intricate 3D paper crafts that were so cool!
Hey turns out the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom is shorter than me!
There was a pretty large games section so we spent quite some time there.
After that we bought Sukiya bowls to bring back to our apartment and had a nice yummy dinner! We decided to try their karaage but we found the fufu karaage much tastier and we vowed to buy the largest size they had the next time they were open.
That's all for today! Stay tuned to my next post where we go to USJ! That'll definitely be a long one.
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
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