Tokyo: Yokohama
This is the fifth recap for LOHOjapan, my 3 week trip to Japan with my boyfriend. After spending a whole day at Tokyo DisneySea, we decide to take another chill half-day of exploring. This means sleeping in lol.
Lunch: Curry House CoCo Ichibanya
Coco Ichibanya is a large curry chain across Japan. Again, you will find one of their yellow stores on any busy street. They specialize in Japanese curry, which is milder and sweeter.
I order the chicken katsu and vegetable curry ($12-13 USD). This is their most classic curry dish so it’s a safe choice. I am shook because it looks exactly like the picture on the menu.
My boyfriend tries a hamburger casserole with rice ($8). It is a smaller plate than their curries but it has a lot of cheese. The hamburger is essentially a mixed meat patty.
Service is fast and efficient, as with all local Japanese chains. The food is hearty and I feel full as I leave another franchise location.
Yokohama
It takes us around 45 minutes to train to Yokohama from Shinjuku. We leave quite late and by the time we arrive at Yokohama station, it is already too late to visit the cup noodle museum. Recommend you to go earlier because you need to get a ticket with a time to come back later to make your own cup noodles.
Anyways, that sucks but there is still lots to do in Yokohama.
Things to do: Walk through Osanbashi Pier
Immediately, I like Yokohama. The air feels cooler and streets are wider and more open. There is less people and it just feels more refreshing. It almost reminds me of Vancouver or maybe downtown Halifax.
Osanbashi Pier is the oldest pier in Yokohama and really close from the station. It’s nice to see the water and run around with an ice cream or drink.
Things to do: Shopping at the Red Brick Warehouse
The Red Brick Warehouse is right next to the pier. They are preparing for some sort of Oktoberfest event outside, but the inside is a hipster shopping center with unique boutiques and shops.
I buy a cool rapper hat for $30 USD lol. Not sure if I can pull it off back in Vancouver.
I also buy this really fun container/box thing from a store that sells fake food. You’ll see a lot of fake food displays in Japan. Helps you get a sense of what types of food you can order in the restaurant.
Things to do: Cosmoworld
Cosmoworld is a mini theme park in the middle of Yokohama. You can see it from a distance because of the giant ferris wheel, which is called the Cosmo Clock 21. It used to be the tallest ferris wheel in the world.
Cosmoworld is quite large. It features a “Wonder Amuse zone”, where you can ride the ferris wheel, roller coasters and more, a “Burano Street zone” with arcade and carnival games, and a “Kids carnival zone”.
We bought tickets to ride the diving coaster “Vanish” and the Clock 21.
Vanish costs $7 USD to ride. It is a roller coaster that “vanishes” inside a hole in the swimming pool. The ride is short but fun. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that we were not allowed to choose where to sit. We wanted to sit in the last row, but they made us sit in the middle… Japanese people and their queues.
The ferris wheel costs $8 for a ride and it takes around 15-20 minutes for a full round. It is very romantic at night and you get to see all of the Yokohama city lights.
The only thing I didn’t like about it is that there is a little tablet inside giving you advertisements the whole time lol.
Dinner: Yokohama Chinatown
Vancouver’s Chinatown is kiiinda sketchy so I don’t usually make it a habit to visit another country’s Chinatown because I don’t expect it to be that great. However, Yokohama’s Chinatown is huge with a history of 160 years old and approximately 4,000 residents.
We get there later than expected so it’s not bustling. All the menus outside the restaurants look identical- mapo tofu and dimsum.
We go into one that doesn’t look too empty and order exactly those things. The mapo tofu is a spicy tofu dish with minced pork. It costs $12 USD and does not come with rice.
We order 3 different types of dimsum – a jade dumpling, xiao long bao and siu mai. They cost $7 USD each (expensive by Vancouver standards).
In general, the Chinese food is delicious but since we are Chinese, it tastes like regular mom homemade cooking. I think it is difficult to find good Chinese food and dimsum in Japan, however, hence the higher prices. What is interesting is that everyone who worked in the restaurant and on the streets of Chinatown actually speak Mandarin fluently. We order by speaking to them in Mandarin, which is a nice break from trying to use Japanese all this time.
Once we finish dinner, we find ourselves ordering some special street food dumplings before they close for the night. We’ve seen this dumplings on Youtube and want to try them out.
They cost $4.80 for 4 pieces and are shrimp and pork dumplings. They are pan fried on the bottom and kind of thick like a gyoza.
There is SO MUCH SOUP inside holy crap. My boyfriend bit into one and it squirted out soup like someone was peeing in a toilet and he said there was still lots of soup in his mouth.
We finish off the night by taking photos around Chinatown. An optional activity is some night time karaoke, but we decide to return back to our Airbnb after all our exploring.
Final thoughts on day five
I wish we got to Yokohama earlier, but to be honest, every day is exhausting and doing a half day of exploring fares better for our feet. I really liked Yokohama’s vibe and their malls are cheaper than central Tokyo’s so a lot more shopping was done.
Cosmoworld also would have been fun to spend more time in as well. They had lots of crane games that my boyfriend claims are “easier to win”, so if you’ve had no luck winning anything so far, perhaps try Cosmoworld.
Yokohama’s Chinatown was surprisingly very clean, but at night time it’s not as bustling as you’d expect. Unlike Shibuya and Shinjuku areas, once it’s past 10pm, the stores mostly close up for the night.
Stay tuned for my next post and follow along with the other recaps!
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Sincerely, Loewe
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