Kobe 4-2-26

​Today we landed in Kobe.  As usual, we took the shuttle bus to a downtown area, and walked a covered shopping mall. 

This mall seemed like the longest one we’ve been to. My iPhone showed that we had walked 10,500 steps, or about 3.9 miles today, all at the mall.  

Normally I don’t like shopping malls, but the ones in Japan are more entertaining.  All of the merchants were in small shops, and many had English explanations about their wares, or, in the case of eateries, pictures.

As usual, our 1st stop was a small shop were I bought a manju (sweet rice cake):

It was worth the calories!  It was so good that after lunch, on our way back to the shuttle bus pickup, I bought another to bring back to the ship.

We stopped for lunch at a place that served Kobe beef. My Kobe beef dish was served with a shrimp croquet.  

The beef was ok, but I think my taste buds are shifting to pork.

We stopped at a shop that sold knives and small tools, where I bought a toenail clipper and a nose hair trimmer, I think both are made of stainless steel. Not the most glamorous items, but the craftsmanship are what enticed me:

For dinner, we decided to eat in the main restaurant to see what we had been missing the past few nights.  

We both had an excellent pea soup.  

We shared a Caesar salad, which had too much dressing. 

Marge had a rack of lamb but she didn’t care for the sauce:

I had sweet & sour pork, but I only ate a few bites because I had some of Marge’s lamb.

For dessert, I had a very good coffee & chocolate trifle:

One thing that detracted from our dinner was that we sat next to a group of 4 people which included a loudmouth woman who had an opinion on everything. I had my Apple noise cancelling earphones, so I put one in my right ear to dampen the sound.

During dinner, the ship announced that  we would skip the next port, Nagasaki, due to poor weather concerns that the Port of Tokyo might close if we tried to dock at our normal date of April 5.  We will dock in Tokyo a day early and will be able to remain on the ship until April 5.

So we will be at sea the next 2 days in rough weather.