From the gardens we were forced to hurry to meet up with Minnie, one of Madam’s High School friends, who presented ‘Er Indoors with a piece of work that’s gracing the living room as I write. There wasn’t, however, too much time for them to stop and catch up on old times since we had to find our way back to the station, stop off at Myodani to pack the suitcase that had to carry our clothing requirements for the next (week-long) stage of the trip, return to downtown Kobe, check in, change and meet up with two more of Madam’s High School friends by six-thirty.
Which didn’t leave us a whole lot of time to catch our breath.
Once we’d alighted at Sannomiya it was a matter of moving as fast as possible, which meant that, once we’d checked in and changed, a brief subway journey was needed to make it to the rendezvous on time.
Although ‘Er Indoors had warned me that the couple we were meeting knew their way around Kobe’s better restaurants, I wasn’t quite expecting the high-class Chinese restaurant where I found myself sipping beer and wondering how we were going to work the ordering caper, since all available menu material seemed to be in Japanese.
In the long run we entrusted ourselves to the chefs’ discretion and were rewarded with a succession of tasting plates covering a range of tastes and textures, though I must admit that the jellyfish starter had a texture that I, for one, wouldn’t have expected.
Jellyfish, you may be surprised to learn, is, if not quite crunchy, much firmer in texture than I would have expected.
And comments about Hughesy’s liking for a splash of chilli produced one extra-hot dish featuring a dried Chinese chilli which, it was suggested, I might prefer to avoid sampling. The dish itself was wonderfully warm, and faced with the lone dried chilli that remained on the plate I abandoned any thought of discretion.
I certainly needed the two beers that were necessary to quell the flames but it was very tasty indeed. As previously indicated, Hughesy’s taste buds don’t do subtle all that well, but throw a bit of chilli their way...
And the witnesses seemed impressed.
Once the meal was over we faced a ten minute walk back to the hotel, so we bade farewell to our hosts for the night and headed back to recharge the batteries before the next day’s excursion to Kyoto.