Kuniko and I had another fun weekend visiting some friends and eating at some new restaurants. We kicked it off with a nice long two hour beachside walk from Okubo to Akashi. It has been a while since we’ve done it, and surprisingly we weren’t really tired at all at the end of the march. We stopped in Akashi to do a little shopping for some presents to bring the Tada family on Sunday, and then came back home to relax the rest of the day. Kuniko baked up some focaccia bread, and later we used it with some prosciutto and Gruyere cheese to make panini sandwiches. They turned out nicely, but we were struggling a bit to get the cheese melted enough before the outside of the bread becomes too dark. More research is needed! We spent the evening playing Skyrim and resting up, and ended up going to bed pretty early – I was definitely in old man mode.
Sunday we got up at a leisurely hour and organized a bit before heading out to have lunch with the Tada family. Mr. Tada is one of my former students, and he had invited us over to meet his family and eat together. He lives in Suzurandai, which is a town north of Kobe city. It still falls within the city limits of Kobe, but it has a completely different feeling from what we imagine of Kobe. It is higher up in the mountains, and far away from the ocean, so it was quite a bit colder than the temperatures that we were used to.
Mr. Tada picked us up at Suzurandai station, and drove us a short way to his house. His kids were waiting eagerly for us outside his house (in the cold!) and were jumping up and down with anticipation. They were seriously excited to meet us. Mr. Tada’s son is about eight years old and his daughter is six, and they were pretty shy with us at first. By the end of the stay they were climbing all over us and we had been admitted as honorary family members.
Ms. Tada served us hand rolled sushi – kind of like tacos in that you choose the ingredients you’d like to eat and then roll your own. Everything was delicious, and part of the fun was watching the goofy kids eating and joking around the whole time. Mr. Tada was very proud of his family.
One of the things that Mr. Tada had requested was for us to bring pictures from our trips around the world. We obliged, although I always feel a little bad for the poor folks that have to sit through vacation pictures. Luckily with the iPad they could skip through as quickly as they liked to find things of interest. The kids seemed really into it, which surprised me a little.
After that Mr. Tada (and his kids) showed us their pictures from a recent family vacation to Vietnam. The pictures were great and I think they had a really good time. I laughed when I saw that almost every picture of Ms. Tada had her drinking beer – our kind of lady. The kids broke out into raucous laughter when a few pictures of them in the bathtub came up. Evidently it was some kind of family joke that we didn’t really get. We had coffee, sweets, and I played a game of Uno with the kids. It was a really fun afternoon. We left around 3 pm, and headed back to Kobe. It was so nice of the Tada family to host us, and we’re eager to return the favor some time in the future.
Back in Kobe we decided to go try a Mexican restaurant that had opened up recently. We weren’t exactly starving to death, but a couple of street tacos couldn’t hurt. The place was called YIS, and the décor and style of food was more Californian Mexican than anything. We had four tiny tacos – really just two bites – between us and a couple of beers. Total bill was 3600 yen ($36). Ouch! The tacos were great, but I don’t think anybody in Japan has figured out how to make delicious Mexican food with any sort of cost/performance balance.
In the same news article that I had found the Mexican restaurant was a list of other nearby new restaurants, and one was recommended for an authentic American feel and great burgers. So we went there, too.
The place was called Bo Tambourine Cafe. It was located down a tiny alley, and when we approached there was a kitten sitting outside hoping to get in. The kitten was a big hit with Kuniko and other customers, and I think it was earning a few scraps just by hanging out in front of the restaurant. Inside the d̩cor was indeed very American Рthere was a jukebox, plenty of tables and woodgrain walls that reminded me of mid-century suburbia. We ordered some drinks, a cheese avocado burger, and a plate of pork ribs.
They were great! The burger was the best I’ve had in Japan. Some Japanese burger places go for a big impact by piling vegetables on the burger so high that it looks like a tower, but this place made burgers like we make burgers at home: emphasis on the meat, with the veggies as accents. The ribs were also excellent – and they really did fall off the bone as we ate them. I think I recognized Costco’s ribs, but I can’t complain because they were cooked perfectly. There were some other dishes that we’ll have to wait and try in the future – gumbo, quesadillas, and more. The bill for the giant burger, plate of pork ribs and drinks was just about the same price as the four tiny tacos from the previous restaurant – much more in line with reality. This place was a hit – and it has been a long time since we’ve found an unqualified hit for American food.
We decided to walk the long way back to the station and burn off some calories. On our way we walked past a restaurant that Kuniko has been wanting to try – a panini restaurant. It was a tiny hole in the wall place, serving wine by the glass and with a huge menu of nearly twenty different sandwiches you could order. Since we had experimented the day before on panini, and since we were right there – we decided to stop in and split one. We had some red wine and chatted with the panini maker, who was very friendly and told us all about the breads that they use. The sandwich we got was simple but delicious – Italian salami, Parmesan cheese, and green olives. The bread was the real star – light was crispy on the outside but moist and soft on the inside. We bought a couple of sandwiches to go for my lunch on Monday, and then finally hit the road.
It was another one of those marathon weekends where friends and food are the main events. Believe it or not, we’re going to do something similar next weekend, too. I have a German wine tasting with a friend from work, and then Kuniko and I will meet for some authentic Korean food in Kobe. After that, who knows?
