We wanted to try Kobe beef while in Kyoto. The hotel provided us with a directory and a map of the eating establishments in the immediate area, including a famous steak place. Since the names are all in Japanese and it was raining pretty hard, it took us a while to find it. A father and his son run this place; while the father doesn't speak any English the son does somewhat, enough for us to communicate. We were the only guests there that evening, at least while we were there.

They didn't accept credit card and since we didn't have that much Japanese yen left, we asked beforehand about the price to make sure we had to the funds to cover for the steak. No, it wasn't Kobe beef but similar. The steak tasted really good and it was incredibly tender. They treated us very well and the meal set, consisting of two types of steak, plain and marinated, and a beef stew, was great.