Pictures from this trip can be found here:
I still can’t really get my head around the concept of being 50 years old. Mentally I feel like I only turned 30 a few years ago, and it is starting to be time to think about middle age. Despite the clear dissonance going on in my head, the fact remained that we should celebrate this milestone. I talked about it with Kuniko, and we decided to take a long weekend and go explore the wine country of Japan, along with some other nearby spots that looked interesting.
Kuniko had plenty of time to prepare, and since we haven’t been able to travel overseas for a few years she was eager to exercise her trip-planning muscles. She put together a trip including several cities, rides on some hard-to-reserve trains, and punctuated with great meals and plenty to drink. It was a busy four days, but it turned out to be a great trip.
On Thursday night after work we came home as usual, had dinner, changed into comfortable clothes, and spent a leisurely time packing for the long weekend. Then, well past our usual weekday bedtime we walked to our local train station and took a local train to Himeji. We arrived there around 11 pm to prepare to catch the midnight departure of the Sunrise Express, a sleeper train running to our first destination city, Yokohama.
We were excited to start our trip so we bought a cheap bottle of sparkling wine and some snacks at the local convenience store so that we’d have the essentials when we got into our room on the train. Unfortunately we learned that the train was delayed by about an hour, so that meant we’d have to wait around on the platform until 1 am. So we just moved the party up a little bit and ate and drank on the platform bench seats.
Finally the train arrived, and we got on board and found our room right away. The train car is divided into different classes and Kuniko splurged to get us a private room with two beds, on the lower half of the train. You could open the blinds to your window and see things rushing by, and when you passed a train platform the ground of the platform was exactly level with the bottom of the window. It was cool to pass our town of Okubo on the way east – seeing it flash by in the dark made it feel like we were starting an adventure. I remember sometimes standing on the Okubo platform in the cold and seeing the Sunrise Express pass by, with passengers in their pajamas peeking out the windows – now that was me!
The room was small but comfortable, and after a few pictures and trying out the amenities, we went right to sleep.
Throughout the night the train moved steadily east, and while sleeping I sometimes noticed pauses in the journey, but I was too sleepy to peek out and see what was happening. The train really did rock back and forth sharply sometimes – once I woke up and thought I was falling off my bed, but it was just an illusion. Maybe it was the excitement of the trip, or the shaky ride, but I didn’t sleep so deeply on the journey.
As the sun was rising we woke up, and soon afterwards there was an announcement that the train would be stopping short of our destination due to the after effects of an earthquake that night. The earthquake changed a lot of the train schedules, and that meant that we’d have to get off and use a bullet train the rest of the way. Since we were up already it wasn’t a big deal – we got to our destination faster and even got a refund on some of the cost – so no problem. We got a glimpse of Mt. Fuji as we passed Shizuoka, and then we were on a bullet train bound for Shin-Yokohama.
Kuniko did all the train navigation for the trip – she loves this kind of stuff and she is great out puzzling out the best way to get to our destination. Luckily in the Tokyo Metro area there are a lot of transport options, so we had flexibility to get where we wanted to go. Soon enough we were on some crowded platforms with the commuters, who were also dealing with a changed train schedule and therefore a unusually stressful journey to work.
Soon we got to the main part of Yokohama. This was our first time to this city, and it was very similar to Kobe, just on a grander scale. But before exploring, we checked our bags into our hotel and got some coffee and a simple breakfast nearby.
Yokohama was warmer than we expected. At first we stayed off the trains because of the commute congestion, and instead walked around the city and used a taxi for long distances. We visited Yamashita Park, a waterfront park that was well-kept and filled with benches and people doing volunteer gardening. On the water were some pretty big ships – both historical and modern. From there we walked back towards the main part of town, and just did some casual sightseeing. The city had integrated the waterways into the design, so coupled with the modern buildings, Ferris wheel and gondola system it made for a very dramatic urban landscape.
As it got closer to lunchtime we made our way to the city’s Chinatown area. Unlike Kobe’s Chinatown, Yokohama’s was quite large, and covered many different blocks into its own neighborhood. We made some offerings at a nearby temple, and then found our first restaurant of the trip – a Chinese place specializing in dim sum that makes their own soup dumplings.
One good thing about the restaurant was that they served beer from the opening time – we’ve been dealing with COVID restrictions that stopped alcohol sales for a long time. It felt oddly exciting to have a beer with lunch.
And this was a great lunch! The dim sum menu that we ordered from was fairly large, and we ate plenty of favorites. The types they had were pretty traditional, but some really stood out. We especially liked the wonton with ra-yu, the shrimp shumai were not so beautiful but tasted great, and we also liked the tan-tan noodles. We ate big and really got our money’s worth. The Chinese staff were friendly enough, and the homemade soup dumplings were indeed homemade – so delicious!
With our bellies full we decided to head to the historical town of Kamakura. The old town is a lot like a tiny version of Nara or Kyoto. We wanted to see the famous Buddha statue there, so we boarded a train that wasn’t so crowded and made the short trip. From the train station we had a long walk, which worked out to balance the calories from our big lunch, and finally we arrived at the Buddha via backroads and rural neighborhoods.
Over the years we’ve had some back luck seeing Buddhas, but this time we had no trouble. There were a lot of school kids there, and elsewhere throughout the town. I guess the ending of the COVID restrictions also meant that school trips could go ahead.
The Buddha was sitting where he was supposed to be, staring out at the tourists staring back. I was surprised to see some windows in the back of the Buddha, like it was in the middle of transforming or something. Apparently the Buddha is hollow.
We walked back towards the nearest train station, bought an interesting red shiso drink for the short trip to the main train station, and then took a walk down Kamakura’s main shopping street. The street wasn’t that distinctive from others all over Japan, so we kind of wrapped it up quickly and headed back towards Yokohama to check into our hotel and take a little break.
So far we hadn’t really taken a shower since the day before – although the sleeper train had a shower we didn’t really have time to use it (how sanitary could it have been?) Kuniko had found a really nice hotel (right across from “The Hub” – a British Pub chain) and we cleaned up and took a nice nap to get ready for a little tiny bit of Yokohama’s nightlife.
We started in Bashamichi, at a taproom for Baird Brewing. One of the early craft beer places to start in Japan, we were going not really for the beer but for the BBQ beef brisket. This places slow smokes their own meats, and it was really delicious. We also had some smoked ribs, but they paled in comparison to the brisket. For some reason this kind of BBQ hasn’t caught on in Japan yet, so I was glad to have a chance to eat it on this trip.
After dinner we walked back to an outdoor drinking/dining place that was open on the other side of town. We had passed it before lunchtime when it was closed, but now in the early evening the weather was perfect to sit outside and enjoy the night views. Throughout summer we can’t really eat or drink outside so this was a nice refreshing stop for us to relax. We had some sparkling wine, and a little cheese.
Yokohama by night is really beautiful – it is a big city that is spread out enough that you can sit back and enjoy the view. Sometimes in the heart of Kobe it is difficult to take in everything at once. We rode the gondolas across the waterway to the other side of the canal, did a little shopping at a big organic food market, and finally made slow progress back to the neighborhood where our hotel was located – right next to Yokohama station. There was a lot going on here – plenty of people out on the streets drinking and smoking, and I saw more foreigners out than I’ve seen in the past two years combined. The Hub was jumping, but rather than go hang out with more foreigners we instead decided to go upstairs and call it a night – we had been on the go for almost 40 hours by then. The next day we’d be heading to the wine country.
