Kobe Day 2

The next day we got up and went to meet Jocelyn's friend, Maki. Maki was born in Kobe and lived there for a little while. Then her parents moved to Tokyo, and then LA. They moved back to Japan when Maki was in high school. She ended up staying with a host family to finish her last year of high school. Then she went to college in the states and met her husband. They live in San Diego and that's where her and Jocelyn became friends. So Maki and her daughters were visiting her parents in Kobe for a month.

Maki and her daughter Sasha, took us up a ropeway to the top of Mount Miya. At the top was a herb garden, not to mention a specatular view of the city.

After we toured the herb garden, we went back down the mountain and went to a Shinto Shrine. This particular shrine was for the god of couples. While we were there, we made a donation to the gods, and made our wish. There is certain protocol you need to follow when making a wish. First you bow, then you throw your money in, then you ring a giant bell ( to wake up the gods), then you make your wish, clap two times, and bow again. This is what the inside of the shrine looked like. People also wrote wishes on these little boards and hung them up. There were also some paper cranes strung together and hung with the wishes. You are supposed to make 1,000 paper cranes for your wish to come true.

That night, since we were in Kobe, we decided to splurge and have a Kobe beef dinner. Wow! The steak was so tender. It was delicious!!! The cook it teppan-yaki style - right in front of you. It was so good. I highly recommend it to everyone who comes to Japan. We paid a little under $100 for our set meal - it included a salad, soup, appetizer of some fish with skin on it - yuck, and tea to finish up the meal. It was worth every penny. It's making me hungry just thinking about it.