My video on Kobe’s best beef in the world being prepared by a Kobe chef: http://youtu.be/Zjat6ykiirQ

My video on Japans Shinkansen aka ‘The bullet train’: http://youtu.be/Xnx2po9Pp20

It is our last evening in the city of Kobe by the sea and the last time team Tokyo shot will be together. We took a cable car up to the Kobe herb gardens in the mountains behind the city.

Team Tokyo shot the last time – Dan, Tan, James, Mark, Sanna, Jade & John

We visited a food court area in one of the department stores of the city. We found one part that were making this very popular food, it was a cross between a curry puff and a donut.

The chefs (all looking like surgeons) had prooved dough and would place the filling inside and wrap them up into a ball.

Then they would deep fry for 3 minutes

Then served up hot. There were 3 savoury flavours, mostly curry tasting, and 1 sweet red bean flavour.

We them explored the food court more sample different flavours, some more western like the banana muffin.

This was all the takeaway we sampled, spot the very english item?

Today I borrowed Dan’s bike and went for a ride up to the mountains behind Kobe.

This sign warns of during heavy rain the waters can rise very fast in just 10 minutes!

It didnt stop these guys and girls having a barbie right where the sign warns you about.

Sanna joined me on a hire bike to continue riding.

We rode over to Rocco island which is a island of reclaimed land from the sea.

The rest of the gang joined on us bikes to explore in the afternoon.

You can be forgiven for not knowing this (as I didnt) but Japan’s Kobe beef is meant to be the most expensive and best in the world. $55 for a meal of 150g Kobe beef and some rice and a few veggies.

Why so exy, well the cows are individually looked after by groomers who feed them beer to give them the munchies to make them want to eat more.

The groomers also take swigs of sake in their mouths and spray it over the cows and pat and groom them. This is meant to get rid of any flies or ticks from the cow, and also gets the groomers drunk, so they must like their jobs. Sounds crazy bit I’ve watched it being done on YouTube.

The beef has a lot of marbling of fat to give it a juicy soft texture.

The chef cooks the beef right in front of you on a hot plate. He is very fast with his tongs and knifes.

He also cooked some veggies and tofu and all the offcuts which had a little bit of fat in them he cooked crunchy and put into a bean sprout salad.

I recorded a video of the chef doing all the slicing and cooking, I will put it on my YouTube channel.

Ok here I am trying to get fancy looking snaps in some gardens around some temples, the best I could do with a camera built into a phone. These are taken in Kyoto by the way. Enjoy the tranquility…

So if your japanese and you’re reading this please excuse me but i don’t know what this food is called? let me know in the comments section below. Anyway for us westerns it tasted bloody good and i will call it a ‘japancake’.

Here are some sights from around kobe in japan where we are staying

Absolutely terrible sunburn on my face this is thanks to the sun climbing mount fuji the other day

Japanese heinz tomato ketchup!

Not strictly japanese dining this was a western cafe

Experimental japanese research boat like something out of james bond. It uses electromagnetic jet engines just like the submarine did in the hunt for the red october movie, very clever technology, basically a silent stealth boat.

One day this will be my balcony and this will be my view, but hopefully sydney.