Mt. Rokko and Sake Museum, Kobe, Japan | Spectrum of the Seas Cruise Vlogs - Part 5

Hey, what's up everybody? Tony with La Lita Loca. This is day four of our cruise on the Spectrum of the Seas. Today we are in Kobe, Japan. This is, again, day four of an eight-day tour of Japan, left from Shanghai, China. Yesterday we visited Osaka, and it's interesting. Osaka is just a short trip across the harbor. I went to sleep last night about 11 o'clock. I know the cruise left Osaka at 4 a.m. and ended up here in Kobe about 6 o'clock, so I woke up to a completely different environment. It's really one of the things I like about cruising. You unpack once, you go to sleep every night, and you wake up somewhere new. Now there are no rainy skies. Hopefully that holds up. I'm heading to Mount Roku and to a sake brewery. There are three major sake districts in Japan, and the one here in Kobe is called the Nara district. This is the place to go for sake, or at least one of the places to go for sake. I'm looking really forward to going up Mount Roku, looking at Osaka and Kobe, and then getting to sample some sake. Time to get this day started. It's about 7.30. I have to be at 8.30. I might try to grab a quick bite, but wow, great trip so far. Come along to Kobe. Here we go. Okay, so I'm back in the music hall. I just realized I didn't share with you breakfast, but I went to Cafe 270, and they had a bagel bar there. Bagel, cream cheese, lox, tomato, capers. It was delicious. I love this grab-and-go concept. I was in and out. I was able to eat my breakfast. It's about 10 after 8. We're supposed to be here at 8.30, so I'm a little ahead of the game, just waiting for Don. Then we're going to get checked in. Then we're going to go to Kobe. Here we are at the top of Mount Roku. It's positioned kind of between Osaka and Kobe. If you look down there, there's a big mass of water. We crossed over last night after leaving Osaka to get to Kobe. Pretty interesting observation area. You can come and look. That's all there is up here. There's some souvenir shops, a couple restaurants, and an observation area. Part of this excursion is jumping on a gondola and going back down the mountain and going to the sake brewery. We'll be leaving here in just a few minutes and heading that way. Beautiful views. Pretty cool way to see Japan. Elevated and high above. The one thing I am digging about Japan is the vending machine culture. I don't know why I'm so excited about this, but even driving up the mountain, just on the side of the road, there were these banks of vending machines. It bodes well when you're well hydrated with sugar and caffeine. They got some healthy options in there. No ice cream up here today, Don. No ice cream. Yes, there is. Inside. In a vending machine? No, but they're right there. No ice cream vending machine. We're at the top of Mount Roku. We've seen the views and now we're going to take a gondola down. But first, I have to get a coke. Classic. Maybe two. The vending machine. People coming up from this path. Not sure what we have to see. So over there is the garden I was talking about. Roku Arima Ropeway. Let's check it out. Well, I think we're off the beaten path. On a path. I'm confused. You're hearing me say, um, because I'm a little confused, but let me show you why. There's arrows. Not sure why they're symbolized. Which way do we go? So we're exploring a little bit of a path that's supposedly going to some sort of ropeway, airway, I don't know what it is. Trying to figure out if it's the gondolas or something different. Mount Roku. The gondola. It is the gondola, yeah. The gondola they call the ropeway. So I believe our tour bus is going to bring us back over here. So there's interesting trail we thought we were going on with nothing. Very short trip for us. We've got to be back in 30 minutes, so we probably have 10 more minutes before we need to turn around. This just takes us to another road. Our exploration here at Mount Roku is turning into a bust. We're at the place we're going to go get on the bus for to get to this place. I'm not sure what this bell means. Of course that's one of the cable car wheels, but that's a ringable bell, but there may be some sort of ceremony that goes with it. I don't want to, don't want to disrespect that. Exactly. Okay, well we're gonna walk back. Don, can you point me home? Yeah, just follow the arrows Stoney. Follow the arrows. Oh, it's an art installation on the path. That makes sense. Heading back to the bus here at Mount Roku, we did a little exploration. Turned out to be a little bit of a bus. It was a path to the gondolas. We have a whole bus to take us to the gondolas, but pretty nonetheless. We are going to catch the cable car leaving 11 o'clock. Oh wow, way off in the distance you can see the spectrum of the seas. Looks tiny from here. Very cool. So we've made our way to the gondola stop, and really another great view of Kobe. And you can kind of see the cruise ship down there. It's a ways away, but closer to see than when we were on top of the mountain. We've got about a 10 minute wait, and then we're going to jump on the cable car and make our way down the mountain. It's a lot of activity up here. People getting on buses, getting on the gondola. People from Canada taking photographs. Some of us. Got it all going on over here. Pretty cool view. Thank you. Yeah. So not so much a gondola, more of an inclined rail car. It looks like a trolley, but we're on the steep incline. So we're going to make our way down Mount Roku to the sake brewery. Thank you. Pretty fascinating. A lot of traditional process went into place. Now a lot of it's been modernized, but there is the film that we saw said that they do hold on to the heritage to keep the process pure. What do you think Don? Yeah. I see they make sake in Don size. That'll last me the rest of my life. Do you think it's time to try some sake or what? I do think it's time to try some sake. I think we should hit the sake. They should limit one cup for each sake per person. Right. I don't want you just emptying the tray out. Sort of leave the tray. So this is Kurezake. Cheers. It does a little bit, not too bitter. It's very good. Haya Oroshi. That tastes more like alcohol than the previous one. Nagori Yuzushu. Should they get the candies? Oh, this is orange Tony. Supposed to be orange. Cheers. No, that one's good. Nagori Yuzushu. That was tasty. Plum wine with plum puree. Cheers. Well, it's definitely plum. All right, Don said that one tastes plummy. Here we go. Yes. Plummy indeed. It mixes different with the orange. Of the four, I think I like the orange the best. I did like the orange. That was delicious. I can get a Kobe magnet here, which is good. I like these little wooden headed dolls. I might be getting like the samurai one over there. Yeah. A big apple and tea. So it's 2.15 back from Kobe. That was pretty cool. The brewery tour and the sake brewery tour and Mount Roku. It was a lot more riding around than it was seeing stuff and the views from Mount Roku. It was it was cool, but it wasn't much. So I don't 100% know if I would recommend that excursion to somebody. I kind of wish I would have done more in the city. But look, I can't complain. It was it was really cool. Just a heads up if you ever come over here. I don't know if that would be the excursion that I picked, but pretty cool seeing the sake process, getting to taste some sake. That was a lot of fun. And then catching that little bazaar in the terminal was kind of neat to do some shopping, too. So we sell away here at four o'clock teppanyaki tonight. There's a show. So it's not even close over, but a great day so far here in Kobe in Japan. I might take a little nap, but I'll catch up with you in just a bit.