I got lost in yokohama again. Yokohama is an interesting area that boasts of the highest skyscraper in japan, a cultural center and a large chinatown, probably among other features that I am unaware of. The first time I went was with a german girl. The trip is an hour by train so we had time to wonder about the historical irony of me, an american jew who travels to japan and meets a german girl. 50 years of history fall away and and splatter the ground like a jackson pollock. English has many similarities with german. It was easier to learn the words she was teaching me than it was to assimilate japanese. True, I had taken german at university, but I had given it back practically unused. She also spoke five languages making it easy to misinterpret her in many ways. So we departed the train into yokohama. Thinking chinatown would be easily accessible, we started walking out from the station and found we hadn’t a clue where we were in relation to the map we had discovered. we didn’t get much help from bystanders who repeatedly pointed us to a police station that was no longer there. Then I told her to think of our trip, not as a vacation, but as an invasion. Centuries of cultural imperatives brimmed to the surface and suddenly my map was completely superfluous. She knew where to go and the best route to get there by surprise. We did miss some of the more interesting sights as we blitzcrieged through chinatown, but we got there in record time. I just had to keep her from sacking the place and putting people to the sword.
This time I was with my russian friends. Because I had been there once before, they expected me to remember how I got to all the interesting places we had almost laid siege to the first time. Honestly, she had been in charge as my direction sense would get me lost in a bathroom (by the way, public bathrooms- they smell the same here . . Yuck) my plan was to find another map and use that to jog my memory as to where she had dragged me. One of the russian girls decided to have none of that. She pointed a direction and started walking. I tried to protest, but I felt like an american citizen again as our leader just made a snap decision and went forward without any real support. So the rest of us followed. After ten minutes of walking in a circle she turned to me and said, why we lost? It is your fault. We doubled back to the information booth where I got my map and they received maps in russian. Armed now with . . . get this . . . . INFORMATION, we boarded the train to yokohama’s chinatown.
It is a beautiful area with carved dragons and chinese (looking) buildings, temples and mythical lions of unknown origin, restaurants and shops with souvenirs and a little carts that may be selling meat products made from dogs and cats. There is one cart that has displayed prepared foods over pictures of cute puppies and kittens. My only hope is that the two things are unrelated. Perhaps the owner is an animal lover (the pictures were of very cute animals) and due to space, displays his/her pets in the only way possible: next to the cooked meat products. As susan or mel would say that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
On my first visit, we meandered about and took pictures. We checked out the knickknack stores (I kept her from ransacking them) and found the cutest as well as the tackiest items. One small snowglobe I found in the toy section was amusing. It had two dolphins in it arranged one on top of the other. I remarked how this could be a learning tool for kids that want to know how a third dolphin is produced. I snuck a picture of that despite the basic rules of no photography in stores here. I would feel guilty, but I really don’t.
the first trip was all about stores, shops, pictures and occasionally holding hands. NO FOOD This time I wasn’t about to let that slip by In chinatown yokohama there are restaurants everywhere. 90f the pictures we took were in front of restaurants. One of the girls said she had heard of an all you can eat for 1000yen, so we looked. And looked. (I’m getting hungry.) And looked. And looked. (Anywhere is good.) And looked. And looked. And looked. (Even the dog cart is . . . . Nevermind.) And looked. Finally I stated what should have been obvious to me from the start. We weren’t going to find it. ( i had a better punchline, but i was too hungry to properly form it) The girls then decided to give me the responsibility of choosing a place to eat. I was grateful as I was starting to feel a little loopy from hunger. I looked to my left and my right and I pointed to something cute. Then I realized what I did and decided to point to a restaurant instead. In unison, all three russian girls said no. I picked out a second choice and a third that they also naysayed.
I thought you wanted me to pick a place?
Yes, but you choose badly.
Do you want to choose a place to eat?
No, you do it.
After a few more negative responses, one of the girls said, jonathan, pick that one.
The meal was great. We had steamed dumplings and soup with seafood from an unrecognizable source. We took pictures I almost thought I saw my food smile. After lunch we went to ‘the chinese museum.’ This place was fantastic. Tickets were 500yen and the elevator dropped us off at the 8th floor. There is a small shrine that greeted us at top and many small gongs. Just because they are small doesn’t mean they can’t make earsplitting noises when played loudly and consecutively by russian dancer girls. Then they take you back in time through modern china. We knew we were going back in time because the antique clock dominating the first room was running backwards. We walked through a marvelous collection of memorabilia and wondered what the captions below the pictures said. Often we would have to make them up.
‘Doctor Brown today made the discovery that patients died when they were dropped out of tall places.’
‘Mary Welsh decided to marry her new hat.
We rented traditional chinese outfits for the day and took pictures all around the museum. A wonderful aspect of the chinese museum are the many performances (free) that happen. We watched a beijing opera singer, an acrobat, a dancer and a lovely girl who played an instrument I had never seen til now. They had traditional crafts which including a stone engraver who would take a photo of you and carve it into a small stone plaque. This upset the russian girls. They told me that an effigy like that was only used for dead people. I rethought my decision to get one of myself.
After the museum we walked down (or up) to Yamashita park. There was a stage where I learned that the girls were not only acrobats, but contortionists and I have a slew of pictures to corroborate this. We took pictures by the water, hoping to catch one of the jumping fish that seemed somehow to instinctively know when there was a camera and how to avoid it. We didn’t take pictures of the statue of girl with red shoes. Looking at the statue I felt a little creeped out thinking of how the parents went to get their little girl’s shoes bronzed and ended up with the whole thing. I’m pretty sure it’s just a sculpture like all the others in the park, but after explaining my theory (and explaining the american custom of bronzing baby booties) no-one wanted any part of it.
The landmark tower boasts of being the highest skyscraper in japan (I really want to spell it skyskraper, but the computer won’t let me. I think it looks better that way). The elevator is egg shaped for pressure concerns and from the second floor to the 69th in 40 seconds, it is the fastest elevator in japan as well. Some people will order a minute egg. This one was bigger and only 40 seconds. Of course the view was spectacular, but I had a lot of fun looking at the charts that tell what each landmark is and where, then pointing into the indistinguishable night and saying look, there’s tokyo.