Yes, There may be some other votes out there but as if I wouldn't have voted her in before she went above and beyond for our 15th (almost) anniversary night out. We started on Monday afternoon saying good bye to the Girls and leaving them in the loving hands of Grandma (Marge) who is slaving away here in Japan for a couple of weeks and seeing 4 of her dozens of grandchildren. That alone would put the night away in high regard but wait, there's more.
Sue and I made it out to the Shinkansen (Bullet train) station just in time to make our train to Hiroshima and then, wait for it,.....KOBE, yes home of Kobe beef, not the Laker. Sue made reservations for a night of Kobe beef and "us time" so we decided to go big and
not go home.
The trip to Kobe took about 100 minutes compared to 7+ hours on the road, plus no concerns about DWA, Driving While American, and parking etc that is a nightmare in Japan. We then took the subway to near the hotel and walked our happy selves the rest of the way. We hung out for a bit in our much larger than normal Japanese hotel room until the magic time to find the elusive, World renowned thing we call what's for dinner, BEEF. Well who would guess that there are Kobe beef restaurants everywhere in Kobe, but we found this place that was also on the short list of recommendations Sue had received from previous carnivores who visited Kobe.
Steakland is the place and it was just as advertised, a land of steak. In a scary sense you can also see McDonald's from the front door for the beef that just doesn't quite make the cut.
In a good sense, they cook the dinner Teppenyaki style just like in the US
sans the corny "holy Cow" jokes, egg cutting in air and fiery onion volcano. They present the beef and I clapped but when you eat it, it is well...
The softest steak I have ever eaten.
A spoon could cut it, heck chopsticks cut it. I love all things steak but this was one for the ages. Imagine beef flavored soft served ice cream, you still have to bite, but not much. It was a great experience and while a bit pricey, it was worth it.
This being our first real night away from all 4 girls at one time, we couldn't pack it in after an early meal, nope, Kobe nightlife was calling. Now you might guess that a Monday night wouldn't be big time, and it likely wasn't for a big city but it looked happenin’ to us country mice from Iwakuni. Our first visit was Bee, a dart bar.
We played a best of 5 and Mick barely won the series,
clearly showing he needs to play more darts in bars. It did really make us remember our buddy Tim Brich who we loved playing darts with back at Barry O's while we were dating. I even threw in a couple of his favorite made up cuss words to remember him by.
Following the Bee, we found this fancy "world" beer pub that seemed to be hawking Belgian beer most but many others on their list. Mick likes wine but when in Kobe in a beer bar, drink beer thank you.
From there it was to a Jazz bar, we thought but they were closed and as the elevator stopped at a restaurant we asked "beer-oo or food?" (bar or restaurant to us) in bad pantomimes, they said "food" we continued down the elevator where employee out of breath from running down the stairs said "Drinks only, ok" so we went back and had one and are pretty convinced we are two of very few Americans who have had drinks there or several other places we went.
Next as we headed towards the hotel Sue saw a golf sign that said Bar, I thought cool and we looked in the alley but nothing was clear, then this young girl comes out of the alley and takes us around the corner and up the stairs to a small bar that has a wide area to hit golf balls into a huge screen and play a round of golf. Now on one's anniversary night, a round of golf might be asking a bit much, but Sue, TBWEITWWW, The Best Wife Ever in the Whole Wide World, said sure and let me play an 18 hole round while cheering me on with my putting.
I shot a 100 but the machine had some hiccups too so I think it was clearly a 94. The good news for wives reading the blog is it took less than a half hour to play.
From there it was getting late....for us....so we headed back down the streets and alleys of Kobe
to the main drag where we were getting close to home
when we came upon the Academy Bar, open since 1922.
They had listed a drink that Sue really wanted
so we went in. You can see in this picture of the painting the owner created of his bar, the size of the AB, maybe on a good night could hold 14 folks.
We were it this night, shock. So we are getting ready to order he says 1000 yen for drink. Apparently we didn't look as rich as we felt but we assured him that price was acceptable and Sue got a wine/spritzer thingee and I got a Guinness. We talked a little about US things like Paul Simon playing on the music and where we were from in America. It seems all Japanese know that Idaho grows potatoes, but Iowa is also in the US so we went with Field of Dreams since the Japanese love baseball and that is easy to talk about.
That did it for Mick and Sue's evening
and on Tuesday we got up really late and took our time to get back to the train.
Sue, again being TBWEITWWW
said we could get Kobe steak AGAIN for lunch
and we found this wonderful restaurant on our walk around.
MORIA, as it is pronounced to us, was a little fancier but similar in food choices.
Again we had two different cuts and they both rocked Mick's Meat World.
Then we went to the shin station, got on a train and came home.
The End.
So you can now hopefully see why I'm so high on Sue
TBWEITWWW
and I'm giving her a huge shout out to you all,
"SUE ROCKS"
and her mom Marge, who watched our animals, is pretty great too,
(BMILITEWWW)!
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