April 9,m 2023 Yokohama Day 3

We were awake by 6:30 a.m. The sky was clear, the temperature a cool +7° C with a moderate !5 to 20 km per hour wind. At 7:30 a.m. we watched as a group of ten paddle boarders left the little cove near our hotel and paddled into Yokohama Bay returning within an hour.

Last evening returning from dinner, we stopped at Family Mart and bought yogurts and scone bites for breakfast with the tea or freeze dried coffee supplied in the room. We ate our breakfast at the table by the window and watched the Sunday morning activity. We have a great view of the Cosmo World amusement park and the 112.5 metre tall Ferris wheel, Cosmo Clock 21, which shows a kaleidoscope of changing colours at night. It is surrounded by a pink roller coaster. Across a smaller inlet is the rest of the amusement park which we have walked past several times a day since we arrived here.

Shinto and Buddhism are the main religions of Japan so there is nothing about Easter in the stores, not even chocolate eggs.

Just before 9 a.m. in the hotel lobby, we met our City Unscripted tour guide, Hiroshi Kawana, for our eight hour mainly walking tour of Yokohama. Hiroshi had created a customized itinerary which we approved about a month ago.

Japan had been a closed country for the 17^th, 18^th and the first half of the 19^th century until American Commander Perry arrived in 1853.

We walked to the old Yokohama Port in Minato Miral, just a 15 minute walk from the hotel, which we can see from our window. We saw historical buildings, including the 100 year old Red Brick Warehouses that have been converted into shops, galleries and restaurants. We proceeded to the water front Yamashita Park, which had lovely gardens full of tulips, snapdragons, pansies and other flowers. There was the annual Garden Necklace mini garden competition entries that added more colourful flowers. Next on the agenda was a walk through bustling Chinatown. We stopped for lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Shinryoku on i-canal street. We each ordered one of their specialties that started with a broth soup containing cabbage and onions, three small dried seaweed wraps containing rice and a choice of fillings from a selection of over a dozen choices. Hiroshi used a translator app to explain what the different fillings were for us, There were two small pieces of fried chicken and three strips of delicious Japanese omelette served with cold tea. We ate the meal with chopsticks. It was delicious and filling. Then we continued the walk along a shopping street known as Motomachi street with its interesting shops. Next we entered a subway station to take escalators up a 30 meter cliff to America-yama Park which connected to the old foreigners neighbourhood of Yamate, followed by a walk back to the water front to Harbour View Park and the rose garden beside it.

Hiroshi hailed a taxi for a 15 minute ride to Sankeien Garden for a stroll among the gardens and the historic buildings which were moved from different parts of Japan over the past century. The owner of the property was a wealthy silk merchant, Sankeien Hara who lived there at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. This was known as the Meiji era in Japan. The Outer Garden was opened to the public in 1906. Sankeien moved historical buildings from other parts of Japan over the years. The three storey pagoda was built 550 years ago and transported from the Tomyoji Temple of Kyoto in 1914. The Inner Garden remained just for the family to enjoy until 1953. The former Yanohara family residence, built in gassho style, was built during the Edo period in the town of Hida in Gifu prefecture in central Japan. It is the only historical building open to the public.

There are different flowers blooming according to the season We took a bus back to near Sakuragichō Station, to the Bashamichi Street shopping area. It is where horse drawn carts once travelled taking foreign visitors from the port to the town. Next visited the old downtown, Noge. It is now an infamous area of tiny bars, clubs and gourmet restaurants. This is where the lively night life happens. It was quiet at 4 p.m. We entered Sakuragichō Station to take the train one stop to Yokohama Station (YCAYT). YCAT is where the bus from Narita dropped us off on Friday and the taxi ride to our hotel had taken a mire five minutes. When we arrived at the platform there was only a few minutes wait for the train, but it waited another five minutes to fill with passengers. The train ride was under three minutes.

We ascended one level on the station to get to the food floor of the Sogo Department store. The square footage rivalled a Costco store and reminded me a little of our visit to Harrod’s Food Hall in London forty years ago. The Sogo Food floor was brightly lit with neat counters where you could buy beautifully packaged candy referred to as sweets by Hiroshi. We were looking for authentic Japanese soy sauce for our son which with the aid of an employee we found dozens of bottles on four shelves. We also wanted to buy some Sakura sweets to try, since it is cherry blossom time. It was harder to find than the soy sauce. Hiroshi asked at three different sweet counters and finally we found a counter that sold the sweets.

Shopping completed, Hiroshi was going to take the subway with us back to the hotel, but we told him it was only a 20 minute walk back to the hotel and we would walk back. He led us up several floors and across a raised walkway to get to Takashima Street where we could see familiar landmarks to guide us back to the hotel.

We stopped at the Landmark shopping plaza to find one of the supermarkets to buy something light for dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.

We returned to hotel before 6 p.m. having walked more than 14 kilometres today which was 25,399 steps.

We rummaged through our luggage to find COVID test kits and tested ourselves for COVID.

Fortunately we are both negative. Next Larry had to takes pictures of the test results and our ID on one phone, then figure out how to screen shoot the time dated photos so that they could be Air Dropped to the other phone that had the Verifly app on it and then be uploaded to the ship’s Verifly document to be approved by the cruise ship so that we can board the ship tomorrow afternoon.

We ate our dinner on the table by the window watching the colours change on the giant Ferris Wheel.