New Year’s Eve, 9:00 PM: We finally got to our new destination, Osaka. Being on the phone for 3 hours with Chase? What a way to end a decade. Anyway, it felt good to be in Osaka, away from the bad luck we’d had in Kyoto. And thank goodness for American hotel chains in Japan. We were treated like royalty, and the hotel room was double the size of the one we had the first time we were in Kyoto. Even though it was a last minute hotel booking on New Year’s Eve, it was only $200 per night.
We walked around looking for places to eat our last dinner of the year. There were still a ton of tourists walking around the streets, so it felt really festive. It also meant that most of the restaurants had long wait times. But after driving more than an hour after being on the phone for 3 hours after waiting for the Kyoto “hotel” to open for 2 hours, we were very hungry and frustrated. I guess the right word would be “HANGRY”.
We chose a small counter-style yakisoba place and it was delicious. Then we sort of wanted to barhop, but we were so exhausted that we picked up some goodies from Don Quijote and headed back to our magnificent hotel room that we used to take for granted in America. It was only a short subway ride from Dotonburi. We sipped peach sake in our room and stayed up til midnight only to say “Happy New Year” before falling asleep.
The next morning, we had planned to watch the sunrise, but after trying to figure out how to pay for our $150 parking spot, we were a bit late and the sky was already getting light. I said, worst comes to worst, we can watch the sunrise from on top of this parking structure. But we were determined to find a better place.
We hightailed it down the empty street, and finally we got to the front of the Osaka castle. We skidded to a stop in the taxi zone at the front of the Osaka castle and booked it to the main part of the castle. We saw people jogging and people walking their dogs, and a few people perched on the ramparts of the castle. We wanted to have that vantage point too, so we ran inside the castle, across the stone bridge, and then up the path to the corner of the castle walls that faced the sunrise. We climbed up the inside of the castle wall and had a few minutes to spare before the sun came through the clouds. And when it did, it looked like burning lava oozing through the dense layer of dark clouds.
After watching the sunrise and catching our breath, we ran back to the car in case someone wanted to ticket us. Luckily, that didn’t happen.
We took a quick nap in our hotel room, and then started planning our day in Himeji and Kobe. We decided to visit the Himeji castle first before hitting Kobe. On January 1st and 2nd of every year, Himeji castle waives the entrance fee. The castle dates back to the year 1333, and is the largest and most famous castle in Japan. It’s also known as the “white heron castle” because its color and structure is reminiscent of a white heron flying.
Before seeing the castle, we decided to drive by the Himeji leather shops. We went to the district and it looked to mostly be marshland, with industrial or run-down equipment in front. We parked at the one that looked the most promising. The front seemed to be living quarters. They had automatic doors under the carport, and we went in and saw a massive warehouse. It was all empty, even though the door had been unlocked. We didn’t see a soul so we turned back and went back across the bridge to the main part of Himeji.
Himeji leather is special and world renowned, especially their white leather. During the tanning process, animal skins are soaked in the nearby river, and the bacteria living in the water start some sort of chemical reaction with the skin. When the skin is then tanned in the sun, it turns a bright white color, naturally.
We went back to Himeji and walked into the covered shopping streets, in search of lunch. Most places were closed. We could only see about 4 places open within a bunch of blocks. Nothing was open! Which makes sense on New Year’s day. We went to a badly-reviewed place and we were sat after a long wait. I ordered a sukiyaki hot pot thing and it was only like $10. It was so delicious!!
Then we started walking toward the castle. It loomed in the distance and seemed to form the central point of the city. I don’t recall any skyscraper being taller than it. When we got into the castle gates, people with megaphones were talking about how there was a 2 hour wait to get into the castle.
We grabbed the pamphlet and saw the big path going up to the main castle. We flipped through the brochure and it didn’t look like anything special. When we walked up the path more, we saw that there was a massive horde of people taking up the entire walkway so we turned around and decided to explore the rest of the castle. We took the other fork in the road and we walked up that path. I marveled at how tall the stone walls were. Despite the irregularities of each boulder, they still managed to make them fit together tightly. It was really cool.
We ended up on a little platform where we could see the rest of Himeji from. We snapped a few pictures, and walked up a corridor on the side to an even higher platform, and enjoyed the view from there as well. Then, we browsed a few local artisanal shops in the historical-feel village right outside the castle. I was looking for a teapot for my mom but none of them caught my eye. We walked back to the car on the main street and started driving toward Kobe for dinner.
Our first stop in Kobe was Starbucks, of course. We got there at sunset. The Starbucks was located in a free-standing glass building overlooking the harbor, and we bought the Kobe Starbucks mug. There was a luxury hotel right on the water’s edge, a few artsy statues in the plaza, and a ferris wheel in the distance. We saw many young people taking pictures of their pimped out rides in front of this beautiful scenery.
Then we drove into the main part of the city to find a place to eat dinner. It felt like the food district of Kobe. Signs everywhere advertised their delicious Kobe beef. we could see smoke coming out of all the buildings and smell the food from blocks away. We actually also walked into a street festival. It was so crowded and people were selling all kinds of sweets and snacks!
This was going to be our last time in Kobe on this trip, so we wanted to make dinner count. We chose Steakland, a well-reviewed and reasonably priced restaurant with many options. After we rode up the elevator, we entered the restaurant, and it was massive. There were multiple grill stations, each one a U around the chef. We both ordered the Kobe beef steak meal, which came with a bunch of sides, soup, rice, a massive steak, and dessert.
I got mine medium rare. The meat was super juicy and soft, and he grilled it right in front of us. We had dipping sauce that they provided, which kind of tasted like tonkotsu or BBQ sauce, but not completely like either. It also tasted a little like the wine sauces that some places like to put on their beef. I mostly dipped my steak in a little salt though. It was some of the best beef I’ve ever had.
Then we left Kobe, and drove back to Osaka. We parked at the hotel, and then took the train all the way up to the Kita ward, the financial/business district. We walked around the food district of this place, but it was pretty dead. There were only two restaurants open and almost no one walking in the streets. The restaurants were full though. All the street lamps and signs to each restaurant were turned off so it looked really quiet and dark and otherworldly.
We decided to bounce so we went back to the Dotonbori area to hang out. It was quite late by this time so there were mostly young people hanging out and smoking outside. We also saw a guy filming his two friends taking turns kicking each other in the nuts. Someone had somehow broke this bench, which wasn’t broken when we were here earlier.
Trash was overflowing everywhere, since the people who collect trash or clean up the fronts of their restaurants were at home celebrating the new year. It was… trashy, there were skewer sticks and plastic bags everywhere, massive bags of trash sitting in the middle of the walkway, and streams of trash showing you where the garbage started and where it was going.
Somehow, Masa was hungry again so we found a place to eat. We realized that we hadn’t eaten at any Japanese Gyu-kaku yet so we went there to grab a late night snack before going home to the hotel. We had a fried ice cream in melon pan bun, and a few cuts of beef that looked fun.
