If there was one thing we wanted to experience in Japan (rather than eating sushi, crossing the Shibuya crosswalk and taking a selfie in front of Miyajima's torii) was to live with Japanese ... and what better way to do it than with couchsurfing?
That someone from the Nobel Prize who invented this extraordinary way of traveling and breaking down mental barriers! That is how we met Kentaro, Satoko and their little boy with the most chubby skunks in all of Japan ...
Sato and Ken live on the outskirts of Kobe and with them we spent a super entertaining day: after coming to pick us up (with banner and everything!) To the train station they took us to their beautiful house.
What the Japanese live in tiny houses is a hoax, huh? All the houses we visited have been spacious with two or more rooms, living room, kitchen and two bathrooms, one for the toilet and the other for the shower. bathtub. And piece of bath had Ken and Sato: we seemed to be in a seat, how nice to bathe there hehe. Well, we continue.
Sato prepared us a cup of matcha (green tea) following the ritual of the tea ceremony and gave us some very sweet sweets (obviously red beans, as you like!).
After talking a little about our lives, about travel, about work, we decided to go on a trip to a sake factory (the area is very famous for the production of this rice liquor). Here we were taught the various processes to produce the sake, although what we liked the most was the practical part: take free sake shots ... campai!
The sake It is one of the most famous Japanese products: it is obtained from fermented rice and, although right now you are thinking 'bah that disgusting', we assure you that it is not bad at all 🙂 Yes, the graduation is quite high so if you do not want a hangover of champions limit yourself to two, three shots.
After so much drinking you had to put something in your stomach, right? Well, we went to a store that sold very rare things. If we are sincere, we did not know very well what exactly we tried, we only know that it was very very salty ... everything tasted like fermented fish but ... it was not XD fish.
What was to suck your fingers was the okonomyaki that our hosts prepared for us: Sato is from Hiroshima and this city is, along with Osaka, the capital of this Japanese pizza / pancake. It was delicious! And to accompany it they also cooked yakisoba (grilled noodles). What a great dinner (with shots of lemon and orange sake mmm, we went to sleep super relaxed haha).
Once again we had another great experience thanks to couchsurfing, we can't stop recommending it!
The next day, after a memorable breakfast with this nice couple, we started a new adventure: go to Himeji by hitchhiking ... but this is another story 😉
