Day 27 - Tokyo (Yokohama)

Our plan for today was to visit Yokohama, around 35 kilometres south along the western edge of Tokyo Bay. After getting ourselves ready we stepped outside and were greeted by passing showers and and cold temperatures. Not exactly great weather for stepping out to Yokohama, but we were going to do it nonetheless.

A quick family picture outside Okachimachi Station.

Some locals, poised to race across the road.

To get to Yokohama, we walked to Okachimachi Station, then caught the train on the Keihin-Tohoku Line which took us directly to Yokohama Station. We then walked to the adjacent Subway Station and caught the train to Minatomirai Station, just a few minutes up the track.

Platform 1 for the Keihin-Tohoku line.

The view on the way to our first destination; seems that even Yokohama has a bloody Ferris Wheel...

...and a Rollercoaster.

Our first port of call was the Cup Noodle Museum, one of only two in Japan. Readers of last year's Blog may recall our visit to the Cup Noodle Museum in Osaka, which was so excellent, we needed to take Josh to the one in Yokohama. Josh is a Cup Noodle freak and goes through them like you wouldn't believe.

The Yokohama Cup Noodle Museum.

The Cup Noodle Museum was packed with tourists, in fact there were so many Japanese Tourists there, I thought I was in Australia. The world famous Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum (Cup Noodle Museum) pays tribute to that cup of noodles that we eat regularly, yet take for granted. On August 25, 1958, Momofuku Ando invented the world's first instant noodles, 'Chicken Ramen' after an entire year of research using common tools in a little shed he had built in his backyard in Ikeda (near Osaka). Later, on a fact finding trip to America, Momofuku observed supermarket managers breaking up Chicken Ramen noodles, putting them in a cup, pouring in hot water, and then eating them with a fork. It was this that inspired him to develop Instant Ramen as a global food, which he called Cup Noodles. 

Big crowds at the Cup Noodle Museum.

The school for making the Noodles.

Kyle and Sky looking the part.

Just Kyle hamming it up. 

Josh in front of some of the many thousands of Cup Noodle designs.

Kyle hams it up again. This time on TV. 

Cup Noodle art.

More Cup Noodle art. These offset ceramic, arty Cups will set you back around $1000 each.

As far as Instant Ramen Museums go, this was right up there. Actually, it was pretty awesome; but, the best part was that we got to make our own Instant Noodles, including designing (with felt pens) the Cup, adding the ingredients and getting them vacuum-sealed. Here's some of our designer cups:

Getting the Noodles into the Cup takes some serious turning of the handle.

Maureen selecting the add-ins.

All kinds of add-in options.

Satisfied that we had become Cup Noodle experts, we then headed off to the Japan Coast Guard Museum, which is a museum dedicated to maritime security and the Coast Guard.

An interesting Christmas Tree we saw on the walk to the Coast Guard Museum.

The key feature, probably the crux of the Museum was an event which took place in late-2001, that became known as 'the Battle of Amami-Ōshima' or 'the Spy Ship Incident in the Southwest Sea of Kyūshū'.

The Japan Coast Guard Museum.

On 21 December 2001 a six-hour confrontation between the Japanese Coast Guard and an armed North Korean vessel, took place near the island of Amami-Ōshima, in the East China Sea, ending in the sinking of the North Korean vessel, which the Japanese authorities later announced was determined to have been a spy craft. The encounter took place outside Japanese territorial waters, but within its exclusive economic zone. During the encounter, the ship was chased by four Japan Coast Guard vessels, who ordered it to halt, firing warning shots which were ignored. A six-hour firefight ensued, during which the spy ship exploded before it sunk.

The centrepiece of the Museum is the actual spy ship, and there was considerable detail regarding the modifications that had transformed a shipping vessel into a North Korean Spy Ship. It was all very interesting and the staff really went out of their way to explain Japan's sovereign rights and the illegality of North Korea's actions.

The nose of the Spy Ship.

The Spy Ship had large doors at the back, inside of which was another smaller boat.

The top of the Spy Ship.

Some of the munitions that were collected from the Spy Ship.

Three Coast Guard ships all docked. I can make out PL31. PL stands for Patrol Vessel Large.

PLH stands for Patrol Vessel Large with Helicopter.

We then walked through the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse, which contained lots of little arts, crafts and food stores, there was even a German Christmas themed eatery outside. 

Walking towards the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse.

Seems like all sorts of people are getting into the spirit of Christmas. I thought she was staff; but, she's not.

Once done there, we headed to lunch at the nearby Yokohama World Porters shopping mall, then headed back out in the rain.

Some views outside of World Porters shopping mall towards the Yokohama Landmark Tower.

The weather only got worse as the day progressed.

We walked through Unga Park, which was quite beautiful, and would be even more so, had it not been raining at the time. The walk through the park took us across two old bridges and a man-made island, known collectively as the Kishamichi Promenade. The promenade is actually an old railway line, now defunct.

The Navios Yokohama Hotel is an interesting building that marks the start of Unga Park.

Walking along the Kishamichi Promenade.

The Yokohama Landmark Tower is the 2nd tallest building and 4th tallest structure in Japan.

At the end of the promenade we were greeted by the sight of the sail training ship, Nippon Maru. Even through the dreary rain, she looked nice against the modern Yokohama cityscape.

The Nippon Maru, permanently berthed in Yokohama.

The Nippon Maru was built in 1930 as a training ship for cadets, training up 11,500 cadets in her 54 years of service until being retired in 1984. During her service, the Nippon Maru logged 45.4 times around the earth (1,830,000 kilometres in total). The ship given to the City of Yokohama in 1984 and has been open to the public since 1985. However, not today, because it was closed to the public (no doubt due to the atrocious weather there).

Whilst the Nippon Maru was close, the adjacent Yokohama Port Museum was open. 

The Yokohama Port Museum was a fabulous museum to visit, and not just because it got us out of the weather. It has many amazingly detailed and enormous scale models of important ships that have passed through the Port of Yokohama. On negative point; however, is that photography is very restricted, for reasons unknown. An interesting feature was a very long wall with stencilled silhouettes of ships from the earliest of times up until now. All of the depicted stencils are to the same scale and it was incredible to see how giant ships had become. Another feature was a giant scale model of a working port in which a truck drops off a shipping container, to be collected by a wharf crane and placed strategically onto a ship. 

That's a lot of shipping containers in that hold.

Whilst we take it for granted, the advent of containers used in shipping in the 1950s, cargo nets hauling boxes of items onto ships, then hand-placed strategically, would have been inefficient and cumbersome. These days, modern ships can carry up to 21,000 containers and be turned around in a port in one or two days. It was a great museum, worth visiting.

We headed back out into the cold, wet and back to Sukuragicho Station, where we caught the train back to Akihabara Station where we had dinner, before heading back home.

At Sukuragicho Station ready to head back.

Night life in Akihabara.