Yokohama: Japan's Other Biggest CIty

A few weeks ago, Lisa and I went to Yokohama for a sightseeing/get out of Ito trip. It is just south of Tokyo (a 20 minute train ride) and holds about 3.6 million residents. It is actually the second largest city in Japan, but there is some contention between it and Osaka. According to Wikipedia, however, Yokohama has a million more citizens than does Osaka. At any rate, there is quite a bit to do and see in this city!

We stayed at a traditional ryokan-style hostel in the city's hostel village. This was a bit of a different experience from other places we've stayed in Japan, as there was a large transient population living in the area. It was clean and quiet, in contrast to the areas of the US that are mostly populated with homeless people. The staff at the Hostel were gracious and helpful.

Yokohama boasts one of the world's largest China-Towns. It is a beautifully decorated area with large Chinese-style gates at the ends of the main streets. We plan to go back there around Chinese new year, as I have heard the celebration is pretty spectacular. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants there. Unfortunately, we were starving when we went, so we just jumped into the first restaurant we found, but if we had held out longer, we would have found that there were 7 or 8 better restaurants than the one we chose.

On the second day of our trip, we took a walking tour from the hostel to the downtown area. It was about a 30 minute walk from the hostel to the city center, and we got to look at some of the beautiful buildings along the way. The shipping industry is huge in Yokohama, and there are three buildings associated with the history of trade in the city: Jack's, Queen's, and King's Towers. Unfortunately, the path we took didn't give us a good view of King's tower, and by the time we got back to that part of town, we were too tired to wander over to it just to take a picture.

One of the other major attractions in Yokohama is the 331 meter Ferris wheel, The Cosmo Clock, pictured here next to the Intercontinental Yokohama Grand Hotel.

The wheel ride gave us some pretty spectacular views of the city, and Tokyo off in the distance. We were lucky it was a clear day. Here's a shot of the famous Yokohama Landmark tower from the top of the wheel:

Here's another more artsy photo of the tower just outside the mall underneath it:

Yokohama's famous Bayside Park is a great place for a peaceful walk. There is a sculpture here of "The Girl With Red Shoes" which everyone seems to take pictures of when they come here. I didn't! Instead, I found this statue commemorating the friendship of the Girls Scouts of Japan withe the Girl Scouts of America:

Lisa also took a cool picture of the arches lining the pathway that leads out of the park:

That about wraps it up for this entry. We spent a few fun days and nights in this, "The Other City By The Bay" (side note: You gamers will be interested to know that The Bay Bridge here was the inspiration for the level of the same name in Sega's "Virtua Racer" game):