Japan 2016 Day 3, Yokohama: Chinatown, Waterfront & Cosmo World
Japan 2016 ~Spring~
Day 0 & 1: THURSDAY
Day 2: Ueno Park, Skytree and Super Robot Spirits 2016
Day 3: Yokohama: Chinatown, Waterfront & Cosmo World
Day 4: Tokyo Disneysea
Day 5: Nebukawa and the Hakone Disaster
Day 6: Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum & Pacifico Yokohama
Day 7: Odaiba & Tokyo Tower
Day 8: Osaka
Day 9 & 10: Universal Studios Japan & Hometime
All photos can be viewed at full size by clicking!
Tutu and I woke up and got ready, so we headed out to meet with Bie and twissie who were going to meet us at our train station. It was kind of hard to find them as it was May Day, so there was a big rally at Yokohama Stadium so we waited under a tree until we saw them finally XD
They gave us a gift!!! ahhhh. Cute panda donuts from the Siretocu bakery in Tokyo station :O They're really soft and almost like little donut shaped cakes, really yummy. I saved them a few days because they were too cute to eat XD
Since we weren't far from Chinatown/Waterfront area we decided to just walk as it was such a nice warm day, then soon we came to the gate (first of many!) of the Chinatown area and all of stopped for some pics.
If you look at twissie's entry here, you can see the making of the picture I'm in on that entry. Taking a picture of her taking a picture of Bie taking a picture of her XD
Some sights along the way.
We came to a place that was selling bubble tea/tapioca style drinks, so twiss was nice enough to take all of our money and order Mango? ones for all of us XD thanks! I liked the drink a lot but I wasn't so sure about the tapioca bubbles, I ended up with a huge pile of them at the bottom too but I finished them anyway XD ughh.
There was also a place selling panda shaped meat buns, so we all got one, Tutu was kind enough to order for me too. I really can't explain how happy it makes me to have great friends like you all ;___; I would have just taken a pic at the most and walked off hungry. THANKS!!
Anyway, this was ridiculously hot for a long long time, it was actually difficult to hold in your hand haha. It was good though!!!
More sights.
We ended up at a panda shop where almost everything they sold was panda related, even the door was a giant panda mouth, I was tempted by a few things, but they sold Dragonball bouncy balls outside that interested me a lot more XD I didn't go for it though.
Although now looking at the picture, it's attached to one of those trick photography places, I didn't even notice, I was too captivated with the giant panda face XDDD it might have been fun to go in there.
Yokohama Marine Tower, we didn't go up it :D
Fight in the park! :O
As I was saying earlier, it was May day, so there were political rallies wandering around shouting various slogans. As we crossed the street to Yamashita park, a couple of the groups we saw at the stadium caught up with us, one guy shouting on a loudspeaker while a small group followed. The guy shouting on the first group was pretty sedate, calmly shouting out his stuff.
Then the group following was lead by this guy...
Click to viewHe should consider a role as a seiyuu XD maybe as a space general. I actually thought because of his tone, this was the pro-war camp (the thing about the pacifist treaty) but twissie said they were both talking about the same subject.
Some sights in the park.
Another nice thing I noticed was how clear the water was, for a port filled with tons of ships this was impressive :O
Another thing that was happening in the park were these flower displays, there were a lot of tourists around taking pics of them, a lot of them were really nice, but it was so hot that a lot of the flowers were cooking in the sun and turning brown. There was also a display with a deck chair that people kept trying to sit on, which would make an old park ranger man appear from nowhere and run over and shout at them to get off. This happened at least twice while we were walking past XD
There was also one with googly eyes that kind of looked like a slime from Dragon Quest, so Tutu posed in front of it while bie took her pic. I already had to sit down because I am old, so I took a pic of them taking the pic.
We walked along some more and got to the Happy Lawson which is a special Lawson aimed at families, so there's a play area I think? Anyway there was a huge queue, so we got some stuff including some really good sunscreen as it was WAY too hot with no shade or clouds, so we needed it, (thanks to twiss for being an awesome mother hen XD) we sat in the shade for a bit to eat some stuff (plus I am an old man) while these guys fought behind us :D
They actually did a lot of impressive stuff and went on for at least half an hour when we started watching, near the end they brought out a fancy box and started talking to the audience, then he just stopped and looked directly at twissie & Bie and said "SO YEAH I LIVED IN LA FOR SIX YEARS, SO IF YOU LIKED WHAT YOU SAW.. PLEASE GIVE US MONEY?? :D" hahahaha that was so weeeiird! Anyway when they started collecting money we walked off lololol
Then we made our way along the waterfront to where Cosmo World is.
I also noticed this crane in the harbour, which is the same type as the Finneston Crane which is my city's (Glasgow) biggest landmark (at least until some other stuff got built right next to it in the 2000's) so two port cities have this connection XD
We ended up at the famous red brick warehouses, which were having a German Frühlingsfest or Spring Festival outside, so that means beer, beer, and 500 kinds of sausages. It was super busy and I was tempted to have a few things BUT we have these things in my city a few times a year so I didn't really feel the I'VE GOT TO HAVE THIS need, so we just skipped. Smelled good though XD Inside there was a lot of stuff related to Yokohama being a port town and being the first place where a lot of foreigners first came to Japan after it stopped being a closed society, I believe the Dutch were the first traders to come over? It, and some other old railways reminded me of my city as we are a port too and have lots of things like old cranes, old buildings and old railway tracks all over the place, which are slowly disappearing.
Another thing that the warehouses were full of (especially the gift shop) were Girl with the Red Shoes stuff, which was around Yokohama a lot, even if none of us had any idea what it was about XD There was even a street next to the Izekicho one we were staying on that had red shoes tiles every few tiles on the pavement (while the Izeki street had blue boat ones). So, after some checking (five minutes ago XD), I found out it was a poem/song called Akai Kutsu and it's something that children sing often? There was even a statue of the girl in the park we were in, but we totally missed that too, oops XD
Pretty sad story if she didn't actually go anywhere after all and just died in Japan D:
We arrived at Cosmo World! this place is actually pretty small, about the size of a large city block, but they filled it up with so much stuff! The big wheel has light shows every night at 7 which are so impressive! I'll share that in a later entry when we're nearby again though. The rollercoaster also goes through the entire area and even goes underground, we didn't go on this... or...anything hahaha the wait times were long and I was feeling nervous again (really sorry about this) and twiss wanted to go on the log ride and I was worried about getting sunburned waiting for it.. I really should have gone on with it, especially seeing as I got much wetter in later days on rides and it looked like lots of fun. Plus I probably would have been a lot less scared in Universal Studios if I had done this. So, sorry again! DD: we'll go on something good again!!
We waited under the hole where the rollercoaster fell into hades and ordered crepes! I got something with a lot of whipped cream and bananas in it, with chocolate sauce. The girl serving even looked like Tomo-Zo from Gacharic Spin (with added glasses) a little bit XD We then walked up to see how long the wait time for the ferris wheel was, and it was over 60 minutes or something crazy, and there was already a line, so we decided against it. There was an arcade as well that I kept playing the UFO catchers in and I think I pretty much dragged everyone into going in there with me, as there was an EEVEE machine, and I really wanted one.
Don't ask.
Tutu had talked about getting a Purikura with me and Twiss so we did go to one, but I was starting to get shy and I was convinced it was only for two people and I was like are you sure? are you sure? it says two! then I ran off, lol I'm sorry, I really do suck. But the pics they took were really really cute, they both looked like cute little dolls XD
On the upside, after 3 years of trying I finally won something from a UFO catcher!!!!!!!! yeah :DDDDDDDDD
We ended up taking a long walk through the Minato Mirai area, and I was really starting to limp a lot at this point and I was a little behind everyone else so I didn't know where we were going lol, I thought we were finding a post office?? but eventually we ended up going to a department store that had a 7/11 cash machine, a Disney store and a Loft store in it.
I now realised what the long journey was for once we got this magical item *______*
!DISNEYSEA AWAITS! I picked Daisy :D
But more in this in Day 4!
Sadly Bie really wasn't feeling well, so we had to split up at this point, but it was so nice to hang out with him and twissie!! We'd see them soon anyway.
We spent a long time in Loft looking at various things, I bought stuff like pens, stickers, postcards (that some of you reading received!) tutu got a lot of stickers too XD I was glad we ended up here.
Tutu and I then headed out to the Yokohama Pokemon centre as we were close by, we ended up in Queen's Square mall and... oh... we found a Disney store.... did we walk all that way for no reason? hahaha oh well, I'm not sure that one even sold resort tickets anyway!
We got to the top floor where the Pokemon centre was supposed to be and uhh.. there was nothing there except some man sleeping on a bench XDD
I'm also not sure why this mall is covered in German writing, maybe something to do with importing? Yokohama's past? there's so much I don't know lol.
I think I needed yet another rest at this point, my feet had died days before and were now zombies, but we had a nice sit down and recharged our energy and mobile devices XDD I also found a sandwich and onigiri I forgot to eat earlier... I mean they were pretty warm, but XD yum.
When we got to the Pokemon centre in the right mall I couldn't see anything I wanted, I didn't lose my my mind at all, but.... this still happened.
...oops.
Added to the Pikachu one I got above, I bought a second pass holder of Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service at the Ghibli store we went to straight after this, so I wasted my money there.. plus although I really like the phone case and charm I use my phone at work a lot and I would get laughed at if I really used it so.... hahaha oh well.
The Ghibli store was nice too, I got some post cards as well as the pass holder, even though I forgot to send them to anyone... lol.
The day wasn't over as we needed some more food for the hotel, so we headed to MEGA DONKI on the train, which was huge, but actually had a few less things than the one nearest our hotel, but there were some things that were new too. Getting home from here was a bit weird, so "it didn't look far on the map" happened again and we ended up walking down the entirety of Motomachi Shopping Street which looked really nice especially at night, but it was loooong and my feet were hurting so bad. This was such a bad idea XD once again I'm really sorry tutu!!
But, we finally got home, getting ready to wake up extra early for DISNEYSEA the next morning :DDDD