Exploring Yokohama

Today I wandered. For hours.  Eventually I ended up in a place where I had no idea which direction was north and only a vague idea of which direction was home.  I wandered until I found a subway station, any subway station (because now I’m a pro) and made my way back home.

From the trip, i’ve gathered a slightly  better grip of the city layout (how big the city is) and something of a headache.

This picture is for Isaiah and Corey – here’s the ferris wheel I was talking about today. Also… I found ferry boats!

My first stop of the day was to locate the Yokohama Brewery that jon and I misplaced the other day. Success.

Feeling good. Feeling invincible. I continued on.

As it turns out, there is another entire downtown section of yokohama. This is the 2nd time I’ve had this realization. It’s called “Isezaki-cho” and is kind of near the stadium.

There’s a pretty huge street mall (think Pearl Street, but more ghetto) and it seems to go on forever. Most people in Yokohama seem to have their act together – walking is for suckas! Bicycles… that’s where the action is.

After walking the length of it, I decided that the first 3 blocks were where the action was at. It’s funny, the stores progress from Starbucks-style places to Pachinko parlours to strip clubs. Gets kind of skeezy pretty fast.

For those of you who are sitting in your comfortable American city, surrounded by English as far as the eye can see, thinking “Poor teamEggers. They must be so lost and confused. All the time!” I’d like to set the record straight. While we may be lost and confused, there *are* a lot of signs in English. Much, much more than I had imagined before I got here.

This leads me to believe that more people speak English than let on, and they let me stumble through Japanese out of pity. Or gratitude for trying. Or a mixture of the two.

In the civilized part of town, there also seems to be street maps available with some regularity. Trusty “you are here” arrows make sure you’re not *too* lost.

Unfortunately, these only appear to exist in the densely populated areas where you can’t ever really be lost. Now, when you accidentally wander into the neighborhoods of Yokohama, these (very useful) maps are no where to be found. Some city planning. Sons of bitches.

Ahem. Anyhow. I found a random street market, that seemed to be aimed at the immediate surrounding neighborhood. It had all kinds of every-day sorts of things (not like the cell phone shops and balla’ wear of the previous street mall I found). But I do wonder… for a country with so much technology (this is a first world country, remember), shouldn’t there be some… refrigeration?

So, by this time I’m thoroughly mixed up, but I have some idea of where a subway station may be. On the way there, I passed a preschool and this awesome street post. It’s totally irrelevant to any sort of story, but I think it’s nice. It probably says something like “don’t park here”, or “that’s concentrated evil coming out of your backside”.