Yokohama

In the weekend of 3-Jul we went down to Yokohama.   We stayed overnight in the historic Hotel New Grand.   This opened in 1927, 4 years after the Great Kanto Earthquake, and was where General MacArthur stayed in his first night in Japan during the occupation.

This video shows the view from the restaurant looking across Yamashita Park to the historic liner and museum ship Hikawa Maru with the distinctive red-and-white Nihon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) livery on the funnel.    And then the view from our room of Minato Mirai area and Yokohama harbor.

Hotel New Grand and Hikawa Maru are minor cultural icons.   For example, they appear in a scene in the latest Studio Ghibli movie.

On Saturday evening we visited Yokohama Chinatown. 

Hannah bought a red hand-bag and a mask.

As part of the package we had dinner in a somewhat radioactive chinese restaurant.  We briefly recorded our highest ever radiation reading of 0.75 micro-sieverts per hour which set-off the alarm on our geiger counter just as the waitress brought my first beer.   The next reading was only 0.1 micro-siverts and the average reading was no more than 0.3-0.4.  But I wonder if we briefly caught evidence of one of the many 'hot particles' that are apparently floating around largely undetected by geiger counters like ours.  

On Sunday we met up with some friends from Rika's mums group at a kids art event at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Minato Mirai.   

After that, we visited the fun park where Hannah got to ride several times on the kaiten-moku-ba.   

Then we rode the 100m high 'Cosmo Clock 21' Ferris Wheel, once the worlds largest.

Towards the end of the video we can see the view to the south to the Yamashita Park and the Hikawa Maru.