G-Dog's tour diary: Kobe beef, Arima Onsen, and the calm before the storm

After a week spent in the quiet seaside town of Omaezaki, the South African contingent of journalists on tour were dead keen on a change of pace and scenery. 

Following the Springboks' win over Italy on Friday night, we all caught respective Shinkansens bound for Kobe on the Saturday morning ahead of a quick four-day turnaround for South Africa's final pool game against Canada. 

READ: Boks pick tested XV ahead of Japan clash

Omaezaki and Kobe couldn't be any more different and arriving in our new destination, I immediately felt like I was in Cape Town. 

Kobe is a port city that is surrounded by a mountain range that has forced construction upwards rather than outwards. The city has spread as far as it can up the slopes of Mount Roppongi, but the constraints of the steep slopes meant that city planners had to look for other ways to expand the metropolis. 

It is also famously known for a catastrophic earthquake that devastated the area in 1995. Over 6,000 people lost their lives. 

Life on a man-made island

I managed to book a room in a hotel on Rokkō Island in the Bay of Kobe. The small Isle also happened to be where the Springboks were staying and it has an interesting history. 

The bustling port of Kobe is a big centre for imports and exports in Japan, and the burgeoning city has experienced growing pains for decades. With space becoming scarce, local engineers decided to transform the bay itself by creating a couple of man-made islands. 

Over a period of 20 years, land was excavated from the surrounding mountains and transported down to the Kobe docks. Barges were used to dump the reclaimed land into the bay and after two decades of work, Rokkō Island was born in 1992. It is one of two man-made islands in Kobe's port - the other being Port Island, which was completed 10 years prior to its younger brother. 

A monorail took us onto Rokkō Island, which is a beautiful mix of apartment blocks, sports fields, and a green belt with docks flanking the seasides. I took a walk around the island on Saturday afternoon and stumbled across another skate park.

Curious to explore the park which had a number of massive vert ramps, I went inside and spoke to who I assumed was the owner. It turns out he is the father of famous X-Games competitors Eito and Takeshi Yasutoko. The brothers are famous vert rollerbladers and I was blown away to discover all of this by accident. I’ve attached a video of their most epic highlights for your viewing pleasure.

Having familiarised myself our immediate surrounds, the rest of the weekend passed by in a blur with the Springboks announcing their team on Sunday ahead of Tuesday night’s clash.

A trip around the bay

On the day of the Springboks' clash against Canada, the Kobe Tourism Bureau graciously offered to take the South African media contingent on a tour of the area's main attractions before the match kicked off that evening.

Myself, Supersport’s Gavin Rich, Hendrik Cronje from the Rapport, the Sunday Times’ Liam del Carme, and Media24’s Adnaan Mohammed met at the Shin-Kobe station early on Tuesday morning.

We were taken by bus to the Kobe port, where we boarded a small, cruise-liner-type boat for a 45-minute trip around the port. 

Our tour guides gave us a rundown of the history of the port, which is well-known as one of the biggest importers of fresh produce into Japan. It also houses one of the biggest dry docks in the country and is home to no less than four of Japan’s military submarines, which we were lucky enough to see moored in various places, with one more state of the art vessel which was under construction.

As we cruised around the port, we could still see parts of the port that had been damaged by the 1995 earthquake. The city had deliberately not repaired certain parts of the docks to act as an historical reminder of the event.

There are a number of notable buildings to be seen from the water and it truly is a fantastic way for tourists to explore and appreciate the docks and surrounding city.

Visit to Arima Onsen

Once we were back on dry land we hopped back onto our tour bus and drove up into the surrounding Rokkō Mountain range to visit the fabled Arima Onsen.

An Onsen is a Japanese hot spring. They are found all around the country due to the volcanic activity around the various islands of the nation. The Arima area is said to be one of the most popular Onsens in Japan, with emperors among the list of visitors said to religiously visit the area.

Before we visited the Onsen to experience the hot, invigorating waters of Arima, we were treated to one of the best authentic Japanese meals I’ve had in Japan.

A multi-course meal in Japan is called Kaiseki and we enjoyed a full six-course meal. The plates of food we enjoyed were amazing, but I don’t really know what half of the things were that I ate. What I do know is that it was fantastic.

After a full-spread opening meal, we had a shiitake mushroom soup before tucking into an amazing plate of sashimi sushi.

Then came the main attraction - authentic Kobe beef. The meat is legendary for its marbled fatty appearance which is attained by meticulous treatment of the cattle from which the meat is obtained.

The portion was modest, consisting of four pieces of Kobe beef cutlets. We cooked the beef with vegetables on small searing hot pans heated by a wax flame. I am not lying when I say it is some of the best steak I have ever tasted and I’ll be lucky if I ever get to enjoy meat of that quality again.

A couple more courses followed after that. I found it interesting that a Kaiseki meal usually serves rice towards the end of the meal, so that you don’t fill up on rice before eating all the good stuff! 

Once we had wrapped our lavish lunch we were guided to the actual Onsen. The experienced can be likened to visiting a public sauna.

Visitors enter a change room where you undress, before moving to an area which can be best described as ‘shower booths’. You must wash yourself down completely before getting into the hot pools.

There were two pool-sized jacuzzis to relax in with clear water while a third larger pool was full of mud-coloured water. The water is not dirty, it is simply a brownish colour due to the variety of minerals produced by the geothermal springs of Arima.

The experience was similar to sitting in a really hot bath filled with epsom salt. I felt invigorated but relaxed at the same time. I would highly recommend visiting the Arima Onsen if you ever find yourself in the Kobe area.

After a day of spoils, we climbed back onto our tour bus and travelled to the Kobe Misaki Stadium where we watched the Springboks dismantle Canada to book their spot in the quarter-finals of the competition.

A trip to Kyoto and the calm before the storm

With their win on Tuesday night, the Springboks wrapped up their pool stage matches and took a couple of days off. I spent my time catching up on laundry, paid one or two visits to the local skatepark, and also took a trip to Kyoto with SA Rugby Magazine’s Jon Cardinelli on Thursday.

The day was spent on foot as we explored the Philosopher’s Path. The ‘path’ is named after 20th-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro, who famously walked the route daily which helped inspire some of his most famous work.

The path spans a couple of kilometres, passing a number of famous shrines that Kyoto is famous for. We passed Hōnen-in, Ōtoyo Shrine, and Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji on our way along the public walkway.

We also had a chance to sample some Japanese street food. I’d been dying to try Takoyaki, which is basically a ball of savoury pancake-like dough filled with diced octopus and spices, and cooked in a ball-shaped waffle maker.

I really loved this experience, although I could tell that Cardinelli wasn’t so keen on the octopus. He did finish his portion though, which was washed down with an ice cold pint of Asahi draught.

At the end of a long day, we returned to Kobe by Shinkansen. I switched on the news to find increasingly alarming stories of a massive Typhoon brewing in the Pacific.

I was due to travel to Yokohama on Saturday morning but by the time the day arrived, Typhoon Hagibis had morphed into the equivalent of a category five hurricane and all transport to my destination had been cancelled.

We braved rainy and windy conditions to watch the Springboks train on Saturday morning, grateful that this was the worst we would experience of the Typhoon. It would make landfall a good 400km away. I spent the rest of the day watching the local news channels as the storm grew nearer and nearer. As darkness fell on Saturday evening, the worst of Typhoon Hagibis began to hit central Japan.

Sunday morning revealed true devastation with widespread flooding and landslides, particularly in more rural areas of central Honshu. I was happy to have safely hunkered down in Kobe but was deeply saddened by how many people had been affected by the worst typhoon in decades.

I packed my bags that afternoon and watched the Japan-Scotland pool game which ended up being the game of the tournament so far. After the hosts beat the Scots, I set my sights on a trip to Yokohama on Monday morning ahead of the quarter-finals of the competition….