Yokohama

Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan and a major port city. It has a nice harbor area and a lot of nice skyscrapers. There is also a little theme park called Cosmo world. It has a nice ferris wheel that was the largest in the world in 1989 but has since been surpassed.  

Minato Murai 21 (harbor of the future)

Nippon Maru, a 1930's sailing ship that serves as a museum. 

Yokohama Landmark Tower

Each city has their own decorative manhole covers

Yokohama also has Japan's largest Chinatown. It has beautifully designed gates and a bunch of great restaurants and dumpling stands. 

Busy making perfect rows of Chinese dumplings.

Delicious steamed buns. The piggy one is pork, the red is strawberry and the white pandas are chocolate.

Chocolate filled steamed bun. It was interesting, not bad at all. It tasted like chocolate Malt-O-Meal, but not quite as grainy.

A major specialty of Chinatown is whole roast duck. We also found the Yokohama special Strawberry Cheesecake kit kats and Rum Raisin kit kats.

We were able to see Kwan Tai temple, which enshrines the diety Kwan Tai who was a general in 200AD for the Chinese Imperial Army. The Chinese shrines are so ornate and colorful!

Everything in Yokohama was Panda themed, even the caution road rails.

The second temple we found was Mazu Miao Temple where the Goddess of the sea is worshipped. 

We went inside where a sweet man walked us through Kau Chim, a chinese fortune telling practice. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into! We were told to ask a question (there was lots of kneeling and bowing involved). Then they give you a cup filled with 100 sticks, each numbered. You then shake the cup while it is tipped slighly forward until one stick comes forward of the others and falls out. To confirm that you got the "right one" you toss two wooden blocks called Jiaobei which have a flat side and a rounded side. If they fall with one facing up and one facing down, then the stick you drew is correct. If not you must start the process over again until you get a favorable result. My fortune is below, google translate as always was very unhelpful. Someone my friend knows was able to translate it partially for me, and he said it means that now is a good time for change and for moving forward, whether it be major life events or travel. 

Map Links:
Yokohama Landmark Tower
Kwan Tai Temple
Mazu Miao

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Fukuoka

On our way to Tokyo, we spent the night in Fukuoka. Fukuoka is one of the major cities on the island of Kyushu (the island we live on). The base provides a free bus for the two hour ride from Sasebo to the airport. From the airport we took the Japanese subway for the first time. I was impressed with how nice and orderly it was. Since we aren't able to read the Japanese characters, it was very convenient that they had the little pictographs representing each station for us foreigners. The station near our hotel was Tenjin, represented by the five green circles in the shape of a flower. 

We came out through the east exit of the Tenjin station, which puts you in the basement of the Parco Shopping Center. We stopped and had an awesome lunch at El Borracho. I had Carne Asada which was delicious, it was fun to see the Japanese twist on Mexican food using Japanese sprouts as the veggie filler. 

The Japanese have this crazy detailed plastic food in front of most of their restaurants. They take great pride in their plastic offerings. El Borracho had a very simple three item menu, so it was easy and I'm sure they are all done to perfection. Their three choices were, beef, chicken, or vegetarian. 

Green tea AND red bean flavored Kit. 

This is an ice cream treat from 7-11. It is a crunchy cake cone wrapped around the ice cream and chocolate. 

We walked down to Canal City, which is a lovely little shopping center. They have a nice mall and hotels as well as a fountain show set to music in the canal area. 

Taking up the entire 5th floor of Canal City is a place called Ramen Stadium. They bring together a lot of the famous ramen shops and styles into one place for you to try them all. You order from automated machines in front of each restaurant. We ate at Menya Houten, famous for their distinct black Hakata ramen. Hakata Ramen is famous around Japan and has it's origins in Fukuoka city itself. 

Okinawa Sweet Potato and Strawberry Kit Kats. The strawberry Kit Kats are regional to Kyushu Island.

My first time seeing graffiti in Japan. 

Japanese cities are full of tiny streets and so many power lines!

We stumbled upon this beautiful zen temple near our hotel on accident. It is called Ankokuji and it is a Buddhist temple. It is a beautiful place to walk around and relax in the middle of a bustling city.

Here is our hotel. Hotel Mystays. The hotel was very nice, but the rooms were TINY! It was fine with us because we only really used it to sleep, but it was very space efficient. It is right in the middle of the busy Tenjin District and close to the subway and airport, so I would definitely stay there again if were were in Fukuoka for any reason. 

 That evening we walked back to the Parco shopping center to look around and have dinner. One thing interesting about the Japanese style is that the men dress very feminine. Their hair is usually 100 times prettier than mine and they like to wear capris and carry man satchels. 

I bought a bunch of french baked goods for breakfast the next day at Gontran Cherrier. Their most interesting offering was baguette noir, which is colored with squid ink and rolled in sesame. 

We had dinner at Okawara which was pretty fancy and nice. However the one interesting thing was they had a mandatory one drink per person policy. In order to order food you had to also order a drink. The drinks were $5 each and tiny, but the berry lemonade I had was delicious. We had a Margarita pizza and another interesting one. It had a garlic based white sauce, avocado, teriyaki chicken, green onion, and a cold poached egg. 

For dessert we stopped at Far East Bazaar, which features Arabian gelato made with palm syrup instead of sugar. It was so good! They also sell a lot of dried fruits and nuts which they top your gelato with. They were excited to tell us that the spelt flake cereal was dried in the winds of the desert. Fancy fancy :)

Map Links:
PARCO Shopping and Dining
Hotel MyStays
Canal City/Ramen Stadium
Ankokuji

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