Yamashita Kōen

I really like the landscape parks in the bigger cities. They are basically an escape from the crowdedness and noise from the city streets. I found one online that looked pretty cool and was not too far away: Koishikawa korakuen. This park next to the Tokyo Sky Dome is relatively large for a park. The entrance fee was only 300 yen so i decided to go in. The park is dotted with lakes and ponds and bridges connect several small islands. The parks abundant trees allowed for some nice strolling in the shade. I gues it's not that popular with the younger crownd in Tokyo since most people were way over 60. After an hour walking around i had seen the entire park and thought it was time to go to Yokohma.
Even though Yokohama is pretty close to Tokyo and it's actually pretty hard to see where one city begins and the other ends, i had not yet visited this place. There was nothing of my particular interest so i decided to go to the rebuillt harbour district. This used to be a big port with warehouses but has been converted to a huge shopping center with theme park and loads of restaurants. It was only a half hour trainride from my hostel to the harbour district. These last couple of days have been really warm and as i got out of the airconditioned train and the hot humid air made me sweat almost immediately. It took some time for me to figure out where to go which is not unusual with a lot of signs that are mostly in kanji. But with a little help from Google maps i found my bearings and set off into the harbor district. The first half hour of walking took me through various huge and expensive shopping malls. Interesting to see but not my cup of tea. I walked passed the theme park where i could hear the kids screaming as they rushed down in one of the rollercoasters. I read somewhere online that the red brick warehouses contained sever very interesting restaurants and i decided to check it out. Halfway to the warehouses i suddenly heard a lady screaming for joy at a truck that was parked at the side of the road. As i got closer I realised this was not a regular truck. The movie Deadpool had just been released in Japan and so a huge deadpool statue in an interesting pose was placed on this truck and then just driven around town. Meanwhile the soundtack for the movie was screaming out of the speakers. Aahh yes these are the kind of things that make me love Japan. I took some quick pictures and went on to the red brick warehouses. It was getting really hot and uncomfortable in the sun and that gave me a good excuse to go into a restaurant for some lunch. I checked several restaurants before choosing one that sells Hawaiian burgers which is basically a burger with avocado. But boy is it delicious! I took some time to really enjoy and let the food settle for a bit before heading of to Yokohmama's chinatown. This is one of Japans biggest chinatowns and it shows. Literally dozens of streets litterd with shops and restaurants that serve chinese food. I found a nice and colorfully decorated temple and walked around in the backstreets some more before going back to the station and joining Jimmy and some other guests in yet another drinking session at Nui's.Read more