Nagasaki to Kobe - our longest day's drive - 11 hours, but some of the world's best Kobe beef at the end of it
Trip Diary Day 23 - 21 April 2019
Nagasaki (Kyushu) to Kobe (Honshu)
Check out Episode 18 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.
Nagasaki is one of our new favourite cities. We barely scratched the surface when it come to things to do there. I would recommend spending more than the the two sleeps we had. It deserves more time. We will be back for sure. Unless some sort of worldwide pandemic puts and end to international travel for a year or two. But that will never happen. It is a lovely city with some great food, coffee and site seeing.
The Long Drive to Kobe
Long drive short version: Coffee. Drive all day. Stop half a dozen times. Have the world’s biggest hot dog for lunch. Arrive in Kobe.
After getting coffee at Komekoya Coffee Stand we were on the road by 9.30. We had a long drive ahead of us. 715 km. We stopped half dozen times. The first stop was the last road side stop, Michi-no-eki, in Kyushu. A small roadhouse and car park. If we stopped and don’t remember buying anything did we stop at all? A great view of the Kanmon Bridge though. It is a large suspension bridge connecting Kyushu to Honshu. It is the only road bridge across the strait. Once we crossed the bridge the Kyushu part of our journey was done.
After that it was a blur of road signs. Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Okayama, Himeji, Kobe… Actually it was hours before we even saw a hint of a road sign pointing to Kobe. It was like the road sign makers think “You fools, we will not show you how far away such an impossibly far city is. No sane person would ever drive that far in a day”.
The other long distance game I played with myself was watching the GPS. The car’s inbuilt GPS would show the next couple of upcoming michi-no-eki and icons for whatever facilities the stop had. Food, toilets, petrol, onsen, that kind of thing. Yes, apparently some of the michi-no-eki have onsens. The more icons the stop had the bigger the roadhouse, and the more eating options.
This was also one of those days I was ruing the fact that this car did not have cruise control. Cramping was definitely a problem especially when your foot is essentially holding the same position for hours on end maintaining manual cruise control. At home I put my car into cruise control to get to the end of our street. I can’t wait for the day we have a self driving car. Or we could catch a train next time. But then we’d miss all the eclectic roadhouses.
The next stop was outside of Yamaguchi at Kudamatsu Roadside Stop. This was our lunch stop. It was approaching 3 pm and we weren’t quite half way to Kobe. It was time for the world’s biggest hot dog. Longest is probably more accurate. There is nothing quite as satisfying as a huge roadhouse hot dog for lunch.
The next couple of stops were basically toilet stops. Nothing more to say other than I peed here. Maybe we bought a drink. I had to keep myself hydrated. My aching full bladder urging me to find the next toilet stop was the only thing distracting me from my cramping foot. The first stop was the other side of Hiroshima at Takasaka Roadside Stop. Then who knows? Maybe we stopped again, maybe we just pushed on to Kobe.
The kids were excellent little passengers the whole way. Surprisingly they were awake for much of it. Playing games with each other or on their tablet devices. Michelle had the most important job - researching Kobe beef restaurants.
Kobe Tor Road Sankaru Hotel
We finally arrived at Kobe Tor Road Sankaru Hotel at 8.30 and checked in. We had a triple room. The room is small but it’s only 9562 Yen (AU$120). There was almost no room to dump our bags. You almost have to crawl over the beds to get from one side of the room to another. But it is a typical inner city business style hotel and reasonably priced.
Time for another digression about the perception that Japan is expensive. It’s not. The end. Okay, I’ll expand on that just a tad. If you don’t count exorbitantly priced meals like the one I’ll get to below, Japan is very budget friendly. If you stayed at a hotel of a similar standard and city location in Sydney or Melbourne it would cost double or more than what we paid in Kobe. Crikey, we’d be flat out getting a basic country motel room for less than $AU180 (JPY14400) anywhere in Australia. It isn’t just Kobe that has cheap hotels. Tokyo and Osaka have competitively priced rooms too. There are cheaper options than middle of the road business hotels too. Budget hotels, like Super Hotels and Toyoko Inns, and guest houses for example.
Parking though often isn’t cheap. We parked at the the car at Times 24 around the corner. Overnight parking was around 1700 JPY (AU$21).
What is the Golden Cow?
We walked about two blocks to where all the restaurants that serve the good Kobe beef were supposed to be. It was 9.30 by then so we were panicking a bit. It was just on closing time for most. We tried a couple but they were closing up so it wasn’t helping our stress levels. We were looking for any of the places on the official Kobe Beef list of certified sellers of Kobe beef. The ones with a Golden Cow. So imagine coming to a city which is famous for pretty much one thing, and you only had one evening to try that thing, and you found that by taking the time over the world’s longest hot dog you may miss out on having that thing… Well, lets just say we weren’t having the most calm and zen like moments. I need my fucking wagyu now dammit!
Kobe Beef Hachisuwa sum Hankyu Sannomiya
We found Kobe Beef Hachisuwa sum Hankyu Sannomiya. A certified possessor of the Golden Cow. It also must be good because it also has a cow out front. See my blog post about the Takachiho steak restaurant and the importance of having cow statues out the front of restaurants. They also had a Spiderman crawling down the wall. I’m not sure if Spiderman has anything to do with the quality of Kobe beef though.
They had room for four hungry little Australians and we were taken upstairs and shown to a booth. The the big gold cow award was produced and left at our table so we could gaze at in awe. So shiny. Our waiter pointed out all the premium Kobe beef on the menu. And why not, they’re probably trying to put their children through college or buy a new Ferrari. It was 32000 yen for a 300 gram sirloin. That’s an eye watering AU$400. A whole cow might cost the GDP of a small country. So we chose the 120 gram steak for 12800 yen (AU$160). I’m starting to think I should retract what I wrote above about Japan being budget friendly. We also ordered 120 grams of “Today’s Rare Part” for 8800 (AU$110). As far as upsizing our meal goes we ordered a couple of sets for 1800 yen each - rice, miso and couple of beef appetizers. Then we had to try the Special Marbled tender Kobe beef sushi for 800 yen each. Throw in a Suntory Premium malt beer, 2 orange juices and a ginger ale and it all came to 33900 yen. About AU$420. It was nice. Okay, it was sublime. Delicious, tender and melt in your mouth. Buttery and rich. Decadently rich. Kobe beef is so fatty and rich you don’t need much. Sure I could’ve wolfed down the entire 300 gram sirloin but even the 120 gram steak divided by four was enough. Seriously it was. Okay, maybe I could’ve had a touch more. It was popular with the kids too. I wish they didn’t like it so much. I wouldn’t have to share.
The thing about Kobe beef is that if you’ve ever had Kobe beef in Europe or America and maybe even Australia it probably wasn’t Kobe. There are only a few thousand Kobe Beef cows in the world and most of those are living it up in mansions drinking beer and eating sweets a few kilometres from downtown Kobe. Very little is exported. Most of it hits the table in Tokyo or Osaka or Kobe. I have a confession. This wasn’t the first time we’ve splurged on Kobe beef. We had it in a Tokyo steak restaurant, Trois Fleisches, back 2013. It was as awesome today as it was then. But is a steak worth 400 bucks? Probably not. Kobe isn’t even considered Japan’s best beef. It certainly has the reputation. It was probably the gold cow standard for a long time. But we’ve had just as good wagyu beef from Gifu prefecture’s Hida beef and Miyazaki Prefecture’s Miyazaki A5. We had the Miyazaki beef in Takachiho a few days earlier. Miyazaki A5 is widely considered to be Japan’s best beef. It was significantly cheaper than Kobe when we had it in Takachiho. The whole meal, BBQ yakiniku style, was around AU$100. Steak like wine obeys the law of diminishing returns. There comes a point where it doesn’t get any better the more you pay. I don’t regret splurging on the Kobe beef. We’ll go back to the steakhouses in Takachiho and Takayama next time though.
Back in hotel by 10.30. Kids in bed by 11.30. After 11 hours driving, including stops, this day is done.
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Check out Episode 18 of our Epic Family Road Trip Across Japan.
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