Yokohama Part 1: Chinatown

We ate our way through Chinatown. 

We wandered around Yokohama's Chinatown on Saturday, eating at different stalls and poking through random shops. It was crowded, and the streets were packed with amazing smells, amazing foods, and panda bear trinkets.

Tasty deliciousness to be had through this gate

We were starving by the time we got off the train, but we held off until we got to Chinatown. It was a good decision. First tasty morsel was this:

It's called a Baozi (or at least that's what the internet told me).  It's meat/vegetables inside a bready/doughy thing, steamed, and served mouth-searingly hot. Mostly, it's considered rude to eat in public in Japan, but in Chinatown, everyone is eating something. My kind of neighborhood.

Pork seems to be the meat of choice in, well, everything

It's a good thing we did a lot of walking because we ate a lot. Serious face-stuffing. In between eating, we did fit in some sight seeing.

There is a beautiful shrine in Chinatown, with a statue of Kanwu, the God of business.

It was so weird seeing such a beautiful, elaborate place in the middle of a cramped neighborhood. Mostly, there were shops and restaurants.  The shops sold mostly pretty rocks, jewelry, the aforementioned panda stuff, and flowy dresses. One shop, however, was very unique. Picture a crazy, crazy cat lady. Now, imagine that crazy cat lady opened a shop. Guess what kind of merchandise that shop would carry. Cat figurines, cats on bags, cat postcards, cat towels, cat everything. The ceiling was plastered with 4x6 glossies of cats, all of which I'm assuming were hers.

When we finally reached the outskirts of Chinatown, we spied the Landmark Tower. At 970ft, you can pretty much see it wherever you go. Since we wanted to go there anyway, Blake and I decided to skip the train and just walk.

It was a good decision because we got to see more of Yokohama, including walking back through the park near the stadium. It was a bad decision because it was so much walking!

We spent the second half of the day in the Minato Mirai area. It's right on the water and includes the tower, a few museums and an amusement park. We didn't see everything in Minato Mirai that we wanted to, but we covered a lot of ground (some of it vertical).

**Read about the second half of our day in the next post.