I had to get off from the Shinkansen at Shin Yokohama Station (新横浜駅) and from there I took a Yokohama line towards Yokohama. I then got off at Yokohama and waited for Keihintohoku line ((京浜東北線) towards Ofuna (大船駅). From there it took me about 25-30 minutes to to Konandai station. By the time I got the station it was 9:00am.
My friend unfortunately was not able to pick me up because she had to stay at the university of Kyoto to finish some assignments, but instead she sent her brother. Her brother despite being much younger than her sister and myself was an amazing host as well as all her family.
Their family have travelled all around the world and, he mother keeps running marathons despite her age. I really wish to be like that woman when I get 50 years old.
In the meantime, I went to have a quick shower and when I came out there were two little boys running and shouting around the house. They were my friend's sister kids and as everyone in the family she was quite friendly from the very beginning. Sadly my Japanese was not fluent enough to keep a whole conversation but it was ok, her kids kept me busy asking me questions that I could not reply back at all. We even had a chance to watch an episode of Anpaman (アンパンマン) and later of Doraemon (ドラえもん).
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| Japanese family hug |
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| Anpaman is so interesting for these kids |
After a nice introduction to the family my sister's brother offered me to go to Yokohama and meet up with two other friends that were also on holidays, and wanted to go around Yokohama as well as practising their English. That was a perfect plan because first of all the more the merrier and I also wanted to practice my Japanese so great. Off we go...
The Yokohama Landmark Tower - 横浜ランドマークタワー
The first stop was going to be the well-known Landmark Tower, which is pretty much the most important tower in Yokohama and undoubtedly the place to take pictures. But to get there we walked a bit and as soon as we got out of the Yokohama station we saw these tall skyscrapers but the first one that cross my lens was the Fuji Xerox one before going into the Granmall Park.
Strangely there was nobody around this place but you could tell that everyone was inside that building working despite being a time for celebration (well at least in the West world). As we moved on we starting walking the Granmall Park and we finally saw people as we were approaching Landmark.
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| Granmall Park |
When we got outside of the Landmark Tower the view was quite impressive as the height and the proportions embrace you in such a way that your eyes cannot look elsewhere but upwards. This is not only because of what I said before but because right outside of the building there is a modern-art sculpture that looks like taken from a sci-fi movie or picture.
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| Modern Art outside of the Landmark Tower |
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| Another angle of the sci-fi sculpture outside of the Landmark Tower |
Once we took enough photos of the sculpture we got inside the building to see what is inside. And then we found out that inside the tower, as in many other skyscraper around the world, there is a plaza (shopping centre) with shops and restaurants (obviously at a price) very close to it called Queen's Square. It's big enough to get lost inside so there are signs to tell you where are the places of interest.
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| Queen's Square Signs - Yokohama |
One thing that made me laugh is that whilst there is no sign telling you "not to take pictures" there was a Plaza officer walking and carrying a tall post with a sign saying "no photos" I presume they don't use the security cameras because I took many photos but nobody came to tell me anything. Please don't think that I am a rebel or anything like that, but I was a tourist and I just wanted to take pictures nothing else.
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| No picture man - Queen's Square - Yokohama |
Landmark Pier
Once we finished looking around the plaza we carried on towards a pier nearby. That part of Yokohama, or rather, that pier, reminded of the Japanese drama that I use to watch before coming to Japan Whereby there was always someone coming and sitting, lighting up a cigarette or just carrying a bottle of green tea whilst thinking about life or his/her love. This character would always think why things couldn't be the way he/she wanted them to be.I didn't tell this to my new friends because I know they would have laughed at me our loud, but deep inside of me it was funny how I could come up with something like that in that moment.
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| Overlooking the sea in Yokohama |
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| Yokohama Bay Bridge 横浜ベイブリッジ |
From these place near the sea you could also appreciate another building that was different from others. I'm talking about the Hotel Intercontinental The Grand Yokohama, which looks very similar to the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, of course I don't think it has such expensive rooms but the view of it was equally beautiful.
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Osanbashi Terminal Pier (大さん橋) & Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse (横浜赤レンガ倉庫)
After visiting and going around the Landmark Tower and having a look at the sea near the Intercontinental hotel, one of my friends said to visit one the historical (actual) landmarks of Yokohama and I'm talking about the Red Brick Warehouse and then we could also have a look at the international pier where ferries and cruisers from all around Asia come and go every day.The first place was the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse, which according to my friend's friend dated back from the beginning of the 20th century and it's sole purpose was that of a normal warehouse and to keep goods coming of oversees. However, due to the WWII and later events the warehouse was used as a warehouse for a short period of time. Nowadays, it's a building that host events, shopping centre, among other things.
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| I guess you can tell who my friends are :D |
I don't know if you can see the back part of the above picture, but at the very back of it you can see a big cruise-ship and that is the place that we were going to go next.
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| The peace bird morphed into a harp - Yokohama Pier |
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| Ōsanbashi Pier (大さん橋) |
As you can see in the picture about the Pier from the distance looks like a aircraft carrier, doesn't it? It definitely has something that resembles it, but despite that it's a very modern pier that welcomes lots of tourists from all around Asia and I suppose Pacific.
After that they said that it was time to leave behind the sea and walk a bit and go to Chinatown.
Yokohama streets are not different from what I would later see in Tokyo, perhaps a bit less crowded (bare in mind it's december) but in general it's a more liveable place to be and walk around. This part of Yokohama at least has a lot of office buildings and hotels, I presume due to the proximity of the pier as well as the offices nearby.
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| Street in Yokohama Yamashitachō Naka-ku |
Another thing that took me by surprise was the you've got to pay for a coffee in this part of the city.
If you read below, I am not a coffee drinker so I'm not a potential target, neither my friends, who rather wanted to take me to a Japanese tea house, to have some green tea. But let's just imagine you've got to pay for that. I felt someone was going to get ripped-off. However, like I said before I am not a coffee drinker so I might not be the best person to be talking about this, let's just take it as a bonus picture.
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| List of Prices in Yokohama |
Chinatown in Yokohama - 横浜中華街
Well, first of all I know that it's quite ironic to visit a Chinese place in Japan, but joke aside, we all know that you can find Chinese anywhere you go and back in mid 1800s when Japan opened its ports to foreign boats, a big influx of Chinese and Taiwanese came to Japan and settled here ever since.If you've ever visited a Chinatown this part of Yokohama will not very interesting as it is literally "more of the same" as you can find in San Francisco, London or Toronto or Vancouver. They are all pretty much the same. Of course, here they have adapted to the Japanese culture. However, without being offensive or disrespectful you know when one person in Japanese and another in Chinese. If you breath Japanese culture you will understand what I want to say with my previous lines.
Still, Chinatown is nice to walk through and according to my friends it's cleaner and safer than going to China in the streets. I guess I will have to go to China to see and experience that first hand, but for know let's say that I am happy I am here enjoying this.
As you know in Japan you can find a lot of restaurant displaying the dishes in a plastic-rubbery version of the real dish in the front window and in the case of Chinatown this was even more important as many dishes (as my friends told me) are written in Chinese so even though they are "kanjis" (characters of Chinese origin), Japanese people struggle to understand them so they have to rely on the displayed dishes to make sure what it is they are going to eat.
The feeling whilst walking around Chinatown is rather different as my friends told me, but I would say it's an in-between one world and another. On one hand, you do get all the Chinese light signs and the people do shout a lot in the streets, but at the same time, the streets and the buildings look rather well-kept and even though I didn't have an opportunity to eat there I would have done it, to see if the quality of the food is as good as it is here in London.
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| Chinese plastic food displayed outside the Chinese restaurant in Chinatown - Yokohama |
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| Plastic Chinese food in Yokohama |
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| East Gate Chinatown - Yokohama |
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| Goodwill Gate - East Gate - Yokohama Chinatown |
Nissan Carshow
By the time we finished walking around Chinatown we went back towards Landmark to visit the Nissan Carshow, which is like a step in the future, because it when you walk into the car show it's more like a futuristic museum about automobiles than it is about Nissan itself. On top of that, the employees both men and women are dressed in a way that resemble the characters from sci-fi movies like i-robot or blade-runner.
The car-show has the very early models of the company and they have certain prototype of cars that have not made it and will not make it to the market, but that certainly gives you a nice idea of what the future holds in term of cars.
If you love cars and anime you might have heard of "Initial-D", but if you're not into anime or manga, it's ok, just imagine "fast and furious" movies and those great muscle cars. Well, here you've got the famous GTR Nissan. I've seen some here in London in the streets, but I never imagine I was going to sit down in one of these beasts. So well the true is that we all sat down and took some pictures to remember the moment, and then we jumped into an electric car that blew our mids, because it looked like a plane cockpit rather than a car. I just wonder what would happen if the computer or the battery dies off :D good times!
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| streamed line GTR |
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| One day....I'll own one of this |
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| "K" was thinking about Initial-D. |
It was already dawn and the sun was leaving us quicker than expected but we still had some hours to go before the end of the day, so the next stop was going to be a cool department store that had plenty of manga and anime stuff.
Manga Shop in Yokohama - 横浜のマンガショップ
There are plenty of manga shops around Japan, I would not say that this is particular to one city, of course I presume that Tokyo, more specifically Akihabara, which I was going to visit tomorrow with another friend. In Yokohama there was this cool hidden place that looked from outside like a mad world full of crazy things but manga. It has a lot of emo stuff but it also had a lot of other weird things and people alike.
We quickly went around every shop and we we found things for everyone's taste, but the background music was very loud. We tried to find the source of such noise and we found out what it was an amazing arcade shop with lots of games I haver never seen. Yes, there were classic like Time Crisis and Initial-D but I spotted one that I could not avoid. That game was Taiko no Tatsujin 太鼓の達人
in some countries in the West it is called Drum Master but sadly Namco did not want to export this game outside of Japan so if you've got one in your country, you're lucky. I challenged one of my friends for a game. But it ended up being two games and I can say now that I was exhausted at the end of the second song.
Korean BBQ (Yakiniku) in Yokohama - 横浜の焼肉
I was very interested in visiting this place because I had tried many Japanese food but I had never thought of having this opportunity to try Korean food so one of my new friends had a place in mind. This restaurant was very hidden but it used to be his place of preference after university lessons.
The place was unique, it had a different vibe from any other restaurant I had visited so far during my trip. I guess picture will talk more than thousand words, but the heat inside the restaurant was unbelievable.
When we go there a young lad took us to a table that had a bbq pit in the middle and then you ask what kind of meat you like and if want any other Korean speciality like bibimbap or kimchi. Then the fire gets very hot, you put the meat on the BBQ and wait a bit until it's cooked.
By the way if you want to visit this place, it's a chain of Korean BBQ, so if you understand Japanese and are soon to visit or live in Japan check the link http://www.fuji-tatsu.co.jp/index.html
Voilá... itadakimasu! いただきます! (bon appétit)
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| Inside Korean BBQ (Yakiniku) Restaurant in Yokohama |
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| Korean BBQ in Yokohama - 横浜の焼肉 |
The last two pictures of this post will be the one I took on the way back towards the Korean BBQ, simply because it was the most beautiful moment of the whole day. The lights, the huge tower, the ship and the ferris wheel.
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| Yokohama Landscape at Dawn - 明け方に横浜風景 |
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| Yokohama Night Landscape - 横浜夜景 |
Wait for my next post in Tokyo..... またね
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