I have tasted kobe beef and quite like it but know nothing about it. Is it a different type of cow?
I've never had it, but at one time, in Japan, that cattle were workhorses used in agriculture, forestry, and mining instead of for meat.
So do you think the meat would be usually more tougher then normal cow meat?
Probably.  That was the only type of cattle in Japan until the late 1800s, then new cattle was imported and cross-breeded with the native stock. Maybe that helped.
So it is becoming more popular in the west now?
Maybe, but I've never heard of a wrangler or cowboy in Japan, so there can't be too many cattle.
Its making me even more curious. I wonder what they look like or are shaped. I guess I also can't visualise a Japanese cowboy. Have you ever tried the Kobe Beef?
and selected as "Improved Japanese Cattle". Four separate strains were characterised, based mainly on which type of foreign cattle had most influenced the hybrids, and were recognised as breeds in 1944. These were the four wagyū breeds, the Japanese Black, the Japanese Brown, the Japanese Polled and the Japanese Shorthorn. The Tajima is a strain of the Japanese Black, the most populous breed (around 90% of the four breeds).
Beef consumption remained low until after World War II. Kobe beef grew in popularity
Kobe beef
Kobe beef is also called , or in Japanese.
History.
Cattle were brought to Japan from China at the same time as the cultivation of rice, in about the second century AD, in the Yayoi period. Until about the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, they were used only as draught animals, in agriculture, forestry, mining and for transport, and as a source of fertiliser. Milk consumption was unknown, and – for cultural and religious reasons – meat was not eaten.