As of 2025, three dozen companies are registered to sell Kobe beef at wholesale in the U.S., while 31 are registered for retail sale — a vast change since 2016, when no retail sales were available.

In this one we visit Kobe city and investigate Kobe Beef. Thanks to the Kobe Tourism Bureau for sponsoring this video!

In 1976, the U.S. began importing beef from Japan—ironically, at the time few Japanese even ate beef and that was imported from other countries—but in 2010, the U.S. placed a ban on Wagyu ...

If you order a box of frozen Kobe beef croquettes from Asahiya, a family-run butcher shop in Takasago City in western Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, it’ll take another 38 years before you receive ...

The shop’s Premier Kobe Beef Croquettes currently have a more palatable four-year waitlist. “We started selling our products through online shopping in 1999,” Nitta said.

Legal rules for Kobe beef, raised only in Hyogo prefecture, require the cattle to be 100% pure Tajima, a strain of black Wagyu, born within the prefecture—and whose every known ancestor was as ...