Dock yourself in vibrant Yokohama
Japanese city more than just a busy port
YOKOHAMA, Japan — There is a sameness to most cities as seen from the harbour — skyline, towers and industrial shoreline. But Yokohama welcomes you with a giant. Mount Fuji may be 120 km away, but it announces itself magnificently on approach.
One of the world’s most beautiful and busiest ports, it’s the departure point for many of the Diamond Princess’ tours around Japan (clusters of locals on the pier will invariably wave sayonara as the ship pulls away).
But Yokohama is also a funky place to hang around, for nature lovers, foodies and shoppers. A road trip along the seaside beaches and surfer havens takes you to Hakone National Park — which surrounds the nearly 3,800-metre-high Mount Fuji. There, the Hakone Ropeway lifts you to the Great Boiling Valley, a sulphurous, steaming reminder of Japan’s constantly active volcanic geology.
“This is going to smell like (butt),” one of my colleagues predicted as we disembarked the swaying cable car. Sure enough, the pungent sulphur smell is the valley’s way of saying hello.
And the bursts of steam from the surrounding cliffs and crevasses are a little discomfiting if you’ve come to trust a little too much in the safety of the earth beneath your feet. In fact, the vents are a hangover from an eruption nearly 3,000 years ago.
Folk-medicine health tip: The local specialty, Black Egg (hard boiled in the springs, black and smelly) is said to add seven years to your life. I’ll let you know if it added to mine.
Yokohama literally means “horizontal beach,” and the seaside road to and from Fuji reminds me of nothing so much as California’s Pacific Coast Highway, with a surf that rivals Malibu. (Hot and humid in the summer, almost never below freezing in the winter.)
One of the towns en route, Fujisawa, will be hosting yachting events at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. Sports in general are big around here, with the city hosting the 2002 FIFA World Cup final, won by Brazil over Germany.
Yokohama Stadium will be the venue for baseball and softball in those 2020 Olympics and is the home for the two-time Japanese World Series champs, the Yokohama DeNa BayStars.
Yokohama is generally thought of as the port of Tokyo. But it’s Japan’s second most populous city, and many Tokyo office workers commute from it, preferring the seaside atmosphere and (somewhat) cheaper rent. But the city also has a kind of endearing wonkiness. Where else would you find both a national ramen museum (the Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum) and a Yokohama Cup Noodles Museum? (Yes, they are entirely different things.)
The Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum is by far the more ambitious undertaking. A conventional museum on the first floor, the stairs and elevators are like a time machine, taking you to an impressive hewn-wood recreation of an early 20th century Yokohama street, with a selection of ramen shops serving various styles.
Feeling adventurous, we opted for the shop serving spicy Miso style. Where our bowls had one powerful, spicy ramen ball, a young office worker nearby served as our entertainment by ordering a bowl with no less than three ramen balls. Soon he was sweating through his suit, but was determined to make it through his personal challenge with his honour (if not his dignity) intact.
The first Japanese port to be opened to the West after U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry “convinced” (with gunboat diplomacy) the Japanese to embrace foreign trade, Yokohama may be the most Western of Japanese cities. Sailing in and out, you’re flanked by cargo ships loaded with everything that Japan exports — loaded at the most productive terminal in the world.
And let it be known that the final battle in multiple Godzilla movies was fought (virtually, of course) in these waters, under Fuji’s watchful eye.