Yokohama

This week Junten is holding its midterm exams, so that can mean only one thing, we get 3 days off work (YAY!), yesterday we decided to travel to Yokohama, to see one of the best Chinatowns in Japan.


Yokohama is only an hour by train from our flat, it`s a city that has been "absorbed" by Tokyo to create a massive metropolis, it is famous for having the tallest building and fastest elevator in Japan.

We arrived in Yokohama at about 11am, stumbling through the crowds of business men to get to the massive "Cosmo clock", a huge Ferris wheel with a clock on it. We wanted to get on the clock to get a good overview of Yokohama and see what it looked like from the sky, and well it looked urban, buildings as far as the eye could see, with landmarks like the "Landmark Tower" standing out.

We then journeyed to a nearby shopping centre to have a look around, I bought a cool Sponge Bob t-shirt and a mechanical pencil (for all my teaching needs ). After our strenuous shopping excursion it was nearly lunchtime, so we headed off to the famous Yokohama Chinatown.

Yokohama was a major centre for the Chinese immigrants coming into Japan, so it is no wonder that you can find one of the biggest Chinatowns around here, and not to mention Chinese temples (check out my pictures for many more impressive pics of Chinatown).
There were so many places to eat it was hard to decided just where we wanted lunch, we finally settled on a restaurant and we had a ten course (well ten different things anyway) lunch for only 2000円(about £9) you can`t argue with value like that!

Yokohama is famous for being one of Japans major shipping ports, so we wanted to check out the port, and luckily there is a nice park alongside the port so we could have a relaxing walk whilst seeing what all the fuss was about.

We saw the ひかわまる（hikawamaru）a Japanese ship used in the war as a hospital ship, remarkable in the fact it wasn`t destroyed at the end of the war.

We then caught the ferry back over towards the landmark tower, we were ready to journey to the top of the tallest building in Japan.

Landmark tower is 295 metres tall and has the worlds second fastest elevetor that travels at an ear popping 750m/min, but the view from the top is the most impressive thing, on a clear day you can see Mt.Fuji, sadly we couldn`t quite see it, well if you squint hard at the picture you can almost see it,



We had an amazing day out, I know I will definatly return to Yokohama one day.

For more pictures click here