Minatomirai: Yokohama's "Docklands"

Today I had work from 10-2. After all that, I came home and then went with Joash to Yokohama initially, then Minatomirai, which is two train stops away from Yokohama. We thought we'd look around Yokohama and this is where we kinda ran into the parade that was taking place. I took some photos but for the most part it was pretty boring. When we first saw all these people crowded at the edge of the street listening and watching someone sing on a float, we thought they might be famous. We asked one of the guards "Who is that?" (in fluent...english of course), and he replied "Ehh...normal person." That was quite a funny anticlimax. It turned out there were a lot of floats passing through for some parade, and no-one was famous, but a lot of people had stopped to watch the festivities so we got sucked in...hehehe.

Anyway, we walked around Yokohama for a little bit; I'm pretty familiar with the area around the station, so none of it was new. We did run into the street band playing some funky jazz so we stopped to listen for a while. Here is a link to a short video I took, nothing awesome to speak about but if we'd stayed we might have heard some good stuff.

We got bored at Yokohama in about 30 minutes, so we headed towards Minatomirai. The train line built to reach Minatomirai and Motomachi (Chinatown) is pretty new and so the area is very modern and very spacious; completely different to Tsunashima, Shibuya, Yokohama, and most of the cities we've visited so far. I really liked Minatomirai for this reason. They had large modern buildings, and we were headed for the Landmark Tower, which is in the Guiness World Book of Records for having the fastest passenger lift, able to reach a speed of 45km/h, made by Mitsubishi! That's a fun fact for you. As I was waiting in the line, it really reminded me of when I was in Shanghai with Arthur and Joel, waiting to go up that Jiang Yang Tower (or something like that). Anyway, the view was pretty cool. I wouldn't say spectacular, since it was mainly buildings, and it was also pretty busy...but the weather today was probably close to the best weather I've had since coming to Japan. I took about 20-30 pictures up in Landmark Tower because I didn't want to miss the opportunity, but I think I'll actually probably go up again at night-time to catch the night lights, but I will need a tripod to take some good photos.

Well, that's about it. Had a good day, but it was pretty busy because its the first public holiday in Golden Week. Tomorrow when I go out, it promises to be just as busy. Enjoy the photos! I know I haven't really taken that many.