Last night after work I had expected to go home and find Kuniko relaxing at home. She had a schedule that put her back at home early, with plenty of time to relax and enjoy a little time off. Unfortunately, her schedule didn’t work out that way, and the way the trains worked out we were standing on the same platform waiting for a rapid train from Hyogo station. Instead of shivering in the cold waiting for the train, we decided to kill an hour at the local tachinomi. This is the same place that I visit occasionally with the inspectors from the factory, so the staff know me pretty well. It was the first time to see me with my wife, however.
We were killing an hour because I had heard that a local restaurant served pretty good hamburgers, and that restaurant wasn’t quite open yet. After an hour of talking and drinking at the tachinomi, we headed over to the Burst Cafe for a burger. The place was decorated like a 50’s diner, except a lot darker. Very interesting decor. On one side of the room were two electronic darts machines, and on the other side was a wall of video screens scavenged from pachinko machines. They were rigged to work automatically without all the flying metal balls, and they made for an interesting background.
We sat at the bar, and ordered burgers and a couple of tacos, and drank some beer while we waited. The owner was a nice guy who knew the inspectors from the factory as well, so we had a good conversation. The burgers came and we dug in. They broke all of my rules for burgers, but despite that were pretty good. The bun was an English muffin, I think the muffin might have had butter on it, but despite that the taste of the burgers was excellent. We easily polished them off and then turned to the tacos, which were decent except for the sweet salsa spread on top.
All in all, it was a good place to eat and drink near the Hyogo station – I’ll definitely try to drop by in the future. Too bad they don’t open until 7 pm…
