After leaving Gyokuzoin temple, we hit the road. The plan was to do lunch in Kobe, pick up some groceries, and then go to stay at the farmstay we booked through Airbnb.
The country scenery was so beautiful. Because of the spacing, the land looked less like suburbia and more like a rich neighborhood where everyone can have massive plots of land. It was so lush and green.
We got on the highway and it was so expensive. We didn’t figure this out til later, but the tolls for the Hanshinkoso in particular were super ouch. The Toyota navigation system was super helpful and lit. It was just as good, if not better than Google maps. We crossed many bridges and drove for a few hours until we reached Kobe. I had researched many of the best Kobe beef restaurants in the area and if you really, really want to live it up you can spend up to hundreds on lunch. But we chose a mid-priced place. We parked on the street and were confused at how the parking meter worked. We asked a lady who was walking by, and she was so nice and helpful. Apparently, you’re supposed to pay a dollar at the start, and then you pay for the rest of the time when you come back to your car. This was the honor system like we had never seen it before. We parked by several high-end stores. By the time we figured it out, the restaurant was already open, and based on the Christmas eve frenzy, I wondered how long the line would be when we got there. As we walked further from the luxury shopping district and in the direction of the train station, the scent of delicious beef got stronger and stronger. We got to the place, speedwalking, and saw that it was half empty. You could eat yakiniku style, or you could order the lunch time special, which comes with a variety of stuff and the beef.
He ordered some sake and I ordered a cassis soda. Cassis is blackcurrant liquor and it tasted sooooo good. He ordered a premium cut of beef, and I ordered the one that was slightly below that since I can’t really tell the difference anyway, and I don’t like fat in my food. The waiter brought out a salad, a box of different sides, miso soup, rice, and the main beef of the meal on a platter.
Our meal was so satisfying and it was pretty reasonable too in terms of price. One girl at the neighboring table had trouble using her chopsticks because her nails were so long. But they looked good, they were silver and sparkly.
After this, we walked around the Kobe department store for a bit. I wanted to find pearls here, since Kobe processes 70% of the world’s pearls. The pearl museum was nearby, but closed. There were also a ton of jewelry stores and pearl factories used for grading and preparing them for shipment all around the world. Unfortunately, all of them seemed to be closed for the holidays. I saw some high end pearl brands in the department store, but that’s not what I was looking for.
Then we started to walk in the covered shopping street near the big mall. We saw a T-rex cafe, a bakery with bread cushions for people to sit on, and many other fun things. We saw tons of people getting in line for something.
Then we had to use the bathroom, so we went to the subway station at the end of the shopping row. It was the cleanest public bathroom I had ever been to. It smelled so great. Everywhere we looked, we saw signs advertising Kobe beef.
After this, we had to hit the road. We started driving north, into the mountains. Kobe is on the coast, and our countryside Airbnb was north of the city, in the mountains. We saw a waterfall hike that was just north of the Kobe train station. We drove toward it, and saw there was nowhere to park. We went up a hill, and saw there was a graveyard or something. We did not drive in, but instead we drove to the right and parked in this random part of the road that wasn’t doing anything.
We walked up a path that took us higher.
I was already tired by the time we came to the place where the path to the waterfall started.
I felt so distant from the city, though I knew the train station was less than half a mile away. The air was so fresh and damp, and natural rocks and moss were everywhere.
We got to a small cafe on a cliffside, and we could already hear the gushing water and see the waterfall through the trees. We started to descend.
There were signs carved or posted on the rocks, which unfortunately I couldn’t read. We started walking downstream, looking at the river flowing in the ravine under us. At some points the trees dominated the path.
Then, I saw this massive yellow and black spider.
There was a little platform built above the river, overlooking it and a dam that was built a little more downstream from the waterfall. It was one of the most peaceful places I have ever been.
I could tell this place had a lot of history. There were informational signs posted at some spots, and even the trees were able to show how long they had been there. I saw this tree with roots that were starting to engulf the rocks at its base.
After about an hour or so, we really had to hit the road so we went back to the car.
We didn’t get a parking ticket. We were on our way again. High up on one particular hill I saw a flash of gold, and it turned out to be yet another temple and a massive statue, hidden in the dense trees.
After a while of driving, we got to the Airbnb. We saw a large field of dirt and crops, and we drove around it to reach the little green house perched between the mountain behind it and the cropland in front of it. Masa stayed in the car while I hopped up to the house to see where we should park. I was greeted by a three legged dog snarling at me. She was sitting by her doghouse in the cold, leashed by a thick metal chain. The old man came out of the house and started speaking Japanese. I replied in English, and he knew a bit. But then he followed me out to the car and communicated with Masa. He parallel parked near the dog house, and we brought our stuff inside. The lawn in front of the house was covered in black plastic sheeting, and I think I wasn’t supposed to walk on it. The old man showed us the layout of the house, and he gave us the option of sleeping upstairs in the western-style bedroom with wood floors and two cots, or in the Japanese style bedroom downstairs that had tatami mats and two futons. We chose the downstairs option. He asked what we planned to do for dinner, and we said we wanted to eat sukiyaki, and if we could borrow his pot. He said that he’d bring some of his cookware out for us, and that the nearest grocery store was about a 15-20 minute drive. We headed out again.
We mapped to the grocery store but the Google maps pinpoint was wrong and we ended up on the other side of a river. We backtracked and entered the really crowded parking lot. People were even waiting on spots. This did not feel like the countryside at all. It kind of felt like an Arcadia or Pasadena shopping plaza on a weekend. We went inside, and threw a bunch of stuff in our cart. This supermarket had a lot of fun stuff! We spent a while choosing meats. We also got eggs, udon, veggies, DAIKON, and sukiyaki flavored broth. We also bought this little pack of mochis to cook because that’s what you do around the new year.
We brought our haul back to the house and were so surprised that the old man had set out a beautiful dinner space for us on the coffee table. He set up a portable stove with a pot on it, and also some veggies of his own from his garden! In true grandpa style, he brusquely took the bag from us and started unpacking it in the living room. Things that he approved of, he placed on the table. When he got to the sukiyaki broth, he asked us, WTF is this??? He said, “no no. i won’t allow this.” And he told us that we would make the broth from scratch with him.
He also said, “why do you have a massive daikon??” We said that we liked it, and he was like “Okay, you must know that this is not what usually happens. But I will cook it for you since you love it.” He must have felt that we were bastardizing sukiyaki. He was very insistent. He put away the veggies we bought, since the veggies he had were much more fresh. He also didn’t allow us in the kitchen, and insisted on doing all the work. He sat across from us and started talking to us as he made the broth and cooked the vegetables. He really wanted us to use all the vegetables we had bought, so he kept adding more and more to the pot.
We sipped on the yummy sake and he offered us wine too, a rose and a red. He loved wine. I ate in silence, but Masa and the old man talked. They talked a lot, and I had no clue what they were saying, but I was happy to sit there and listen. For some reason, thinking back on this dinner, I don’t recall not understanding what they were saying. Masa offered occasional translations. I think they talked about how men’s appearances don’t really change, but women’s do, over time. The old man tried to guess my nationality, and they talked about the old man’s son, who was a doctor that was still single. The old man was married to a lady who lived and worked in Kyoto, and he had only come back to his family home to maintain it. We asked about the dog outside. She actually loved being in the cold. She was three-legged because she was in an accident with a car a few years ago, and the old man adopted her from the shelter. He had recently remodeled the guesthouse we were staying in to be more of a western style, and he lived in the really old and dilapidated house next door. When most of the veggies and all the meat was done, he brought the udon and dumped it all in.
We were already stuffed, but how could we refuse? Masa and I made a deal. If he ate all the konjac, I’d eat all the udon. And then it happened. I felt so uncomfortable. The old man insisted on doing all the dishes himself and even physically nudged us out of the kitchen when I tried to do the dishes, saying “Okay. Okay!” to get the point across.
We were not nearly done with the night. Next up was mochi making. He brought out the mochi machine, which jiggled the rice into a mochi texture in a matter of minutes.
Then he coated one in warabi, dipped one in sukiyaki sauce, and sprinkled sugar on the last one. They had a really mild taste, which I liked. After we ate them, he offered us more, and we had to refuse at this point.
The old man turned on the TV to show us what Japanese TV was like. It was one of those singing shows, and we watched some adults perform the same song they performed as kids. As we ate the mochis, the old man sat in front of the fireplace, facing away from us as he sipped wine. You might think that the old man would let us digest at this point, but no. Next up were yams that he had roasted in the fireplace during dinner.
Masa was done, but to be polite, I ate one. Of course it was delicious but I was really starting to feel not okay. The old man asked me if I was sure I was done eating, and then he put it away. He turned off the TV and turned on the radio to show us the Japanese jazz music he liked to listen to. The old man asked us if we were going to bathe, and he drew a bath for us in the bathroom. Masa took a shower, but I waited a bit. I felt awkward leaving the old man in the house alone while we got ready for bed.
Finally he started turning out the lights and left to go to his room in the house next door. I took a bath, and it was just like the onsen in the other places where there were hot springs. Then we went to sleep.
I woke up in the morning to the smell of hot bacon and potatoes. The old man came back in the house before we woke up and cooked us breakfast!
The old man had fried potatoes and bacon for us, given us toast, and used the remaining daikon from the night before to make us breakfast! It was a lot of food. Over breakfast, he chatted more with Masa. About how he climbs up the mountain every morning to cut wood, how he sometimes drinks so much wine that he drops the chainsaw while he’s using it, about how we were kind of like his grandchildren that he hadn’t had yet.
After breakfast, we started packing up and the old man helped us bring our luggage out to the car. He also had us write our dreams and thoughts in a notebook. The previous guests also did that too. Masa wrote that he dreamed to travel the world, and I wrote that I dreamed of living in a warm sunny house with my family members. We wrote that we had a great time in his house, and we hoped that we could come back soon.
The dog was in a playpen out in the field, so I ran over to hang out with her. She got her muddy paws all over my leggings and my coat! We dragged out saying goodbye. The old man said that we were welcome back anytime, and that we could come back if we needed help too.
