Big traditional Kobe Dinner

One night in Kobe we were taken to a very traditional restaurant and served a big traditional meal.
There were no menus but they only explained the food as it came. Each company at the restaurant had their own room and own waitress, and we never ever saw (or heard) any of the other guests.

Dish 1: Plum wine & Appetizer

Dish 2: sashimi

Note that leaf on the ice, is called something like meat leaf, and is extremely tasty and has a kind of spicy flavour perfectly fitting the raw fish and wasabi!  

The food was definitely interesting, some better tasting than other. But I tried everything, and was a good sports! Not only did we get to try foods, but also drinks. The sake I did not like at all, tasted way too much rice (which I prefer to chew rather than drink)! However, we were also served plum wine with the first dish and all of us foreigners fell handlessly in love with it! Tastes like freshly made grape juice, like just when the grapes for wine are pressed...and then a love round after-taste of plum.

Dish 3: soup with dumplings

Dish 4: tofu, beans in peanut paste (amazing!!), fried sweetcorn ball, fried potato ball (hidden in the flower),... 

Dish 5: grilled fishes, served on a ceramic square pot with a small coal fire in 

You are supposed to all of the fish. I tried. Fins were ok. Head I only got half way and stopped after 1.5 head. There was something extremely bitter just by the neck. But at least I tried. Apparently much more then what foreigners normally do. 

Dish 6: boiled melon and other veggies. Very interesting. Unusual. Not amazing. Nor bad. 

Dish 7: fried eal in pickle. 

Our own kimono woman came in to serve the rice for the 8th dish. 

The rest of the 8th dish: soup and pickled things. 

9th dish and we had finally reached the dessert. I was way beyond full by now.

Later I found out that this plum wine is actually sake, made with plums, and having a lower alcohol content.