I really wanted to try Kobe beef even though it would be a huge splurge on food which I never do, but I never thought I'd be able to get Jason to go with me, yet when we were deciding where to go for dinner, he suggested Kobe Beef. We had run into Norah Dunbar and Janet Eastman last night and they'd gotten a recommendation from a local and tried a steak house that they highly recommended to us, it was supposed to be a little cheaper than most places, so I got the info from Norah and we went.

The place was called Steak Aoyama on Tor road which was supposedly very close to the Sannomiya station, but it took us a lot of walking around to get oriented and find Tor road. We had a map with Tor road marked, but the majority of roads are not marked, so it's really hard to tell if you're going in the right direction. By the time we finally decided to ask someone, we were less than a block away, so he must have thought we were idiots.

It took almost 10 years, but this meal beat out the meal that Matt made me for my high school Senior Prom, as my best meal ever. It was incredible! Jason and I walked into this little restaurant and there was only one other customer in there, a woman sitting at the grill. The woman who greeted us had us sit at seats at the grill - a huge iron plate which we later learned was 45 years old, but had been cared for well. Jason and I were sitting right on the corner, so we could see each other eat and take turns taking pictures of every step of the meal.

They didn't have an English menu, but the woman's English was very good, so she explained the menu to us, and we both ordered a Kobe beef meal which was the most expensive meat, but hey we were in Kobe, we had to try the Kobe beef rather than just the Japanese beef. I think this was Jason and my first one on one bonding experience since our trip to Mamallapurum where we got our lizards in India, and it was fun.

We had a choice of rice or bread with our meal, so I ordered rice and Jason ordered bread. The bread may have been the better option because they toasted it on the grill, it looked like yummy bread, but my rice was good too.

First out was the appetizer plate. We each got a sampler plate of a slice of beef, a shrimp like thing, a sardine like thing, some pork kind of thing and a couple of other items. We didn't really know what we were eating, but it was all about the experience. Jason gave me his little slimy shrimpy thing because shrimp gross him out. It wasn't a lot of food, but it was a good sampling. I figured we'd still be hungry after the meal because this wasn't a lot of food, but there were so many courses that I couldn't have eaten any more.

Next course, a bowl of a creamy soup and then a delicious salad course!

Next they brought me my bowl of rice and put a piece of aluminum foil on the iron plate grill in front of us. They also brought us a little plate of salt and some soy sauce. The salt helps bring out the flavor of the beef. The chef carefully prepared several vegetables and laid them out on the foil in front of us. Every step of the meal was a work of art, nothing was just thrown together. There was one vegetable that we didn't recognize, it was lotus root. The woman knew that it would be an unfamiliar one to us, so took the time to come over and show us the vegetable before it's been cut up and cooked.

It took almost more patience & self control than I could muster to wait for all the vegetables and beef to be finished before digging in because it all looked so good. The chef laid the veggies out in front of us on the foil as they were prepared, but the very last step was the grilled garlic cloves which you eat with the beef, so it was best to wait until everything was there before digging in. Before we started in on the main part of our meal, we put on the bibs they provided and then took a piece of meat, a garlic clove, and a little bit of salt and soy sauce and took a magical bite. The Kobe Beef doesn't really taste like beef at all; it just melts in your mouth, a lot like butter. Oh, I forgot to mention that we had a choice of prime rib or sirloin and we both chose the sirloin because you get more meat. The sirloin was amazingly tender, I've never tasted anything even remotely like it; I can't even imagine what the prime rib would have been like.

The food was so incredibly good that Jason wolfed it right up, but I chose to savor every bite and plan each bite so I saved the perfect bite for last - a piece of beef so I could savor the flavor in my mouth.

I felt like the meal was absolutely perfect, but yet there was more! They brought out dessert, and our choice of tea or coffee. We both chose coffee and they brought out real (super thick) cream for the coffee. I wish I had taken a video of pouring the cream in the coffee because the way it swirled around and floated to the top was mesmerizing. Dessert was a plate of fruit and little ice cream balls, which was also amazingly good.

The meal cost us each about $75-$80, but it was totally worth it. The best meal EVER! I can't imagine what it would take to beat this. Great food, great service, great company!