Below are pictures from my daytrip to Yokohama (about 45 minutes west of Tokyo proper, by the seaside). I had the day off today because I have to work a concert event this Sunday for a group called Psychic Lover. They perform the title song for the new Power Rangers movie that comes out next month. I will actually be going to an advance screening of the movie tomorrow night at Toei Films in Ginza, so I will let you all know how it was. It can't be any worse than Brave Story!
Yokohama is the second most populous city in Japan behind Tokyo, but it sure didn’t feel like it (this could have been because everybody was working). Unsurprisingly, Yokohama felt like a bigger and more vibrant version of another port city I have already visited; Kobe. Like Kobe, there is a maritime museum, various touristy boat rides, a large seafront tower for viewing the bay area, and a Chinatown.
As of right now, Yokohama is my new most desired future living destination in Japan. This is mainly because it was a gorgeous day today (very hot though) and the breeze coming off the sea was just great. The streets were also wide with hardly anybody walking on them, a welcome change from the crowded, narrow streets of Shibuya or Shinagawa.
I first walked around the harbor and port area, looking in shops, and walking through parks. Yokohama wants to be San Diego, CA. Clothing stores sell surfer gear, old glass bottle-style Coca-Cola machines are in abundance on street corners, and it was the first time I saw Mexican food establishments in Japan! There were many opportunities to be a tourist, but I did not partake. I would have been the only gaijin AND the only customer at said attractions and rides because most people were working.
I finished up my day with a trip to the famous Yokohama Chinatown, the largest Chinatown in Japan (Kobe had one of these too). Having actually shopped in the haggling, cut throat environment of Beijing, Chinatowns fail to wow me anymore. How come Chinatowns never sell all the pirated stuff that they actually have in China? I ate dinner at a buffet-style restaurant in Chinatown and it was surprisingly good and cheap (well, cheap by Japanese standards, not Chinese standards). As far as I could tell, the majority of the people who worked in Chinatown were actually Chinese immigrants. Though they could speak fluent Japanese, I often had a hard time understanding their heavily accented speech. I’m sure Japanese people have the same problem when I speak.
After dinner, I took my time walking back towards the train station through an upper-class shopping boardwalk - It was very nice and peaceful. The jam-packed train I rode back to Tokyo was not very nice or peaceful. On the train, the girl to my left read her book by smashing her face against the page, so that the paper actually rested against her left eyeball. She would then manipulate the book in a way that her eye would slide down the paper, reading the story one vertical line at a time. At first I thought she was blind, or had poor eyesight, but she seemed to be looking around at all the advertisements in the train car just fine, and when she got off, she walked away from the train just fine. Oh, and men in Japan carry man purses. The guy to my right’s Louis Vuitton bag, which was just about as big as his chest, smashed me into my seat. It didn’t matter, I was still dreaming of my new home…Yokohama!
B.E.W.
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