Yokohama Chinatown

Today was a national holiday, so Hiroshi and I went down to Yokohama today to have lunch in Chinatown - and to buy jasmine tea. We went to an all-you-can-eat dim sum restaurant. It was ok, but we got full really quickly. I'm not sure if it was worth it. Basically it was 3000 yen a person - Chinese food is expensive here! A bit much for lunch. Surprisingly we haven't eaten anything else today because we are still stuffed - you know how Chinese food usually leaves you starving an hour later.

What got me as we were eating, was that there were tons of kids running around the restaurant, and as far as I could tell, there was no special children's price. Who pays 3000 yen for their kids to eat lunch? Well they running around being obnoxious more than eating. Of course, this was an excellent counter measure to the old biological clock. Gosh kids make a lot of noise - is there any way to breed silent ones? I think we would have enjoyed lunch a lot more if there were no kids present.

After lunch we went walking thru Chinatown and had to push thru tons of people. It was pretty busy. I wasn't too into pushing and shoving, so we moved on to Yamashita park which is a big park on the bay. It was beautiful out today so it was really nice walking around enjoying the sunshine. There were lots of gulls circling, and magic shows and families with (quiet) kids. We then continued on towards Minato Mirai, which is a futuristic development area a couple kilometers north of Yamashita park. There is a big walkway and some other buildings to drop in and shop at along the way. So we had a nice long walk. We went into the old storage house (a huge red brick complex called Aka-Renga in Japanese) that has been turned into an upscale shopping center. We soon left because it too was crowded. So much nicer outside.

We were going to go to Landmark Tower (which has the world's fastest elevator) to the viewing platform to see if we could see Mt. Fuji at sunset, but we were too tired. So we just hopped on the train back home. And despite being perfect weather in terms of temperature and sunshine today, tonight is absolutely freezing... and, oh no, the heater has been turned on! My fingers were icicles! So much for fall!