interesting facts about osaka, trains and kansai

i was reading kansai scene in the office today, and spotted many punctuation, grammatical and formatting errors in the magazine. such time did i have that i wrote a letter to the editor, with a list of the errors i spotted. i wonder if i will get a reply, and if i do, what it will be. the magazine, though, now has some new writers whom i think i quite like. let’s just hope they improve their copyediting.

anyway, there was this article on Hankyu railway celebrating its 100th anniversary, and included several interesting pieces of information:

Umeda （梅田）got its name because:

Hankyu Railway’s predecessor bought the area, filled it (umeru, in Japanese) and called it Umeda, using the characters for fill and field (埋田. The first character was later changed to the more romantic plum (梅).

Also, i’d always thought that Hankyu and Hanshin are rival railway companies, but it turns out that they had been rivals; the former bought over the latter about 4 years ago to form Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.

Finally, want to know where some of the most expensive real estate in Kansai are located? They’re “north of the (Hankyu) Kobe Line between Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi and Rokko station”. I do know that many diplomats live in the Nishinomiya area, but am not familiar enough with Hyogo Prefecture’s geography to verify if the two facts do match up.

Can anyone enlighten me?

best place for value for money Kobe beef~

thanks to a review in Kansai Scene, i tried out Fuji, a teppanyaki restaurant in Kobe.

Fuji really is wonderful for Kobe Beef. Their dinner set is only 5200yen, and with it you get:

• tonpeiyaki – egg omelette with a stip of bacon in it
• suji negiyaki – beef gristle with an omelette with lots of fresh chopped spring onions
• 200g of kobe beef
• a choice between fried rice, okonomiyaki and this yakisoba/fried rice combination whose name i’ve forgotten
• refreshing yuzu sherbet (add 200yen)

the reason why it’s so wonderful, is because the same price at most other restaurants would barely be enough to cover just the beef.

the beef here was really juicy and melt-in-your-mouth too:

just look at that delicious goodness.. you can flavour it with the salt on the side if you want to, but it was good enough without.

just looking at it makes me want kobe beef again! arrghhh…

fuji’s website is here. just go down the street at benetton at Sannomiya JR/Hankyu station and turn left after you see the Family Mart.

arima onsen

is one of the oldest onsen places in japan, and is the most famous one near osaka that i know of. it’s most convenient to get to via coach buses – from the hankyu bus station in umeda, you’ll reach in just an hour; far better a trip than taking the hanshin railway and changing to yet another train line.

we went there in early december, too late for the best of the autumn leaves, but early enough that the weather is still beautiful.

heading there, we definitely felt a bit out of place, as most of the other passengers were old people, with the rest being middle-aged. i think we were the only two who were in our twenties..

its famous gin no yu public bath:

 

its water tasted terrible though…

check out the other steaming hot springs:

accompanied with a stern warning:

arima is very small, and its age is visible in quite a lot of its buildings

 

even the exterior of our hotel was really drab:

our room was gorgeous though. it had a spacious entrance way, a front porch with the toilet AND bathroom and wash area attached, a main room of about 10-12 tatami mats and a smaller bedroom about 4-tatami mats in size, as well as another area with 4 arm chairs and a small coffee table.

the onsen in the hotel itself was so-so. it wasnt big at all, which means that one can only imagine how crowded it could be on long weekends. dinner was awesome though – everyone should definitely have a traditional kaiseki dinner while in japan. it’s meant to have 12 courses, and this is only half of it:

amongst the dishes were beef sukiyaki, chawanmushi, tempura, sashimi, grilled scallop, crabs legs, an udon dish, a mixed starter, some vegetable stuff, steamed chicken and broiled fish. i somehow forgot my chawanmushi – there were too many dishes on the table – and i regret that still!

i think the most interesting in arima is the toys and automata museum though – foreigners receive a discount!

the museum contains traditional miniature toys from Germany, modern toys, wind-up dolls and others.

most of the german toys were christmas related:

this is how multiple wood-cut animals are made:

note the tiny carved figurines in walnut shells at the bottom right:

 

there were many such christmas decorations, but this was the biggest and the most beautiful:

on another floor were these wind up toys. push a button and they move:

 

 

note the eyes on the horse on this one:

 

the creator of the above has an obsession with anubis:

besides these, arima has nothing much really. it’s nice for a weekend getaway from osaka – especially since it’s so near – but it wouldnt be a must-go.

kobe beef

for anyone interested, i went here on sunday, and the beef is really good! it’s recommended by w.y.’s boss and quite a few pple i know have tried it and approved :)

the beef is cooked teppanyaki style, so it’s nice seeing it grilled before your very eyes. the chef seemed quiteskilled with the knife too, and mine was perfect at medium rare (although to be honest, i think medium rare should have had more blood. but it was tender and juicy so no complaints there!)

for lunch, the set comes with rice, soup, salad and fried taogay and xiao baicai. so all that and 150g (too little!) of beef costs 2980yen.

apparently this is meant to be a very reasonable price for kobe beef!

kobe

went there last week, and kobe is always gorgeous..

the chinatown there is like chinatowns almost all over the world though - it must have a pavilion and lots of ching-chong stuff

as well as a willow tree and dragons (that arent in the picture)

i went to mosaic and harbourland for the first time too, and that area is so beautiful and charming!

i like the glow in this picture around the words..

the ferris wheel in kobe.. seriously, compare any of the ferris wheels in japan to the singapore flyer, and you have to agree that the latter needs some serious image management..

look at the colours of this ferris wheel! bright and eye catching and nice!

 

the ferris wheel with an icon of kobe - Oriental Hotel - in the background..

the roller coaster ("which sucks", according to my japanese friend) and carousel

the harbour view.. you have the kobe port tower (i think that's what it's called) and the museum (the one with the spiky cool modern architecture)

mosaic has lots of halloween decorations, like everywhere else in japan.. the japanese are seriously crazy about halloween for some reason!

so cute!!

kobe - ijinkan

i went to kobe about 2 weeks ago with some of the people i met on the hyogo ship programme, and we did the touristy thing and visited ijinkan, this place that showcases western-style houses. i really liked it cos it reminded me of europe, and the surprising thing was that neither of them have visited it before, despite living between hyogo-ken and osaka-fu and attending university in hyogo. heh.

it was quite fun! we visited 3 of the 7 (i think) houses in that area due to time constraints. i had a formal event that day, hence the attire:

this english man had LV!

there was another guy called Ben who loved to hunt, and his house was full of stuffed animals! like polar bears:

the head of some animal whose name i've forgotten:

cougar skin

zebra hide:

and numerous heads of different types of deer, antelope etc

 

there was also an england house:

cool outfits that you could try on

an amazing bar:

you could play dress up here too:

a freaky bust:

the ticket stand with a really friendly auntie:

they have nice manhole covers in kobe too:

i also went to the chinatown in kobe - it's the nearest to me - but was too lazy to take any photos. haha. will be heading down to kobe again this weekend and perhaps i'll drop by chinatown again, and will hopefully take some pictures then!