Japan

NYK Hikawa Maru

She struck mines three times as a hospital ship and survived all three. Skip the pretty first-class rooms and go down: the original 1930 engines are still in the engine room.

Nippon Maru Memorial Park

Twelve times a year, about 80 volunteers set all 29 sails of a 1930 training ship entirely by hand. Watch from the dock for free, board over lunch, come back for the furl.

Japan Coast Guard Museum Yokohama

Disguised as a fishing boat, it had four engines where a trawler has one or two. You can count them from the walkway, and it costs nothing to get in.

Yokohama War Cemetery

The only place in Japan cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, on a 13-hectare hilltop. Most of those buried here died as prisoners of war.

Dockyard Garden

An 1896 stone dry dock you can walk down into, free, at any hour. Stand at the bottom and a 296 m tower rises straight out of the dock head.

Yokohama Bay Bridge Sky Walk

A 320 m walkway slung beneath the road deck of a suspension bridge, free, and open only on weekends and holidays. Turning up on a weekday is the classic wasted trip.

The Cafe, Hotel New Grand

Seafood doria, spaghetti Napolitan and pudding a la mode were all invented at Hotel New Grand, and all three are still on the menu downstairs. The Napolitan uses tomato, not ketchup.

Sankeien

Ten Important Cultural Properties, almost all bought elsewhere and carried here, including a pagoda built in 1457. The inner paths open only twice a year.

Bashamichi gas lamps

Japan's first public gas street lighting was lit here in 1872, and the 149 lamps along four streets still burn real gas, not bulbs made to look like it.

Kyu-Yoko Gallery

A genuine Class 110 steam locomotive from the 1872 opening of Japan's first railway sits free in a gallery thirty seconds from the monument everyone photographs instead.

Yamate Park Tennis Courts and Tennis Birthplace Memorial Museum

Lawn tennis was first played in Japan here in 1876, two years after the rules were set in England. You can still book one of six public courts on the same ground.

Yoshimuraya

A long-haul trucker fused two ramen styles in 1974 and over a thousand shops copied him. You order by firmness, strength and oil, and residents say three words: katame, koime, ōme.

Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum

Two basement floors rebuilt as a 1958 street, the year instant noodles were invented. Every shop sells a mini bowl so you can eat four or five regional styles in one sitting.

Taya-no-Dokutsu (Josenji)

You are handed a candle at the temple office and light it at the cave mouth. It is your only light for 570 m of passages carved by hand over centuries, past about 250 Buddhist reliefs.

YOKOHAMA AIR CABIN

A continuously running gondola built as city transport rather than a mountain lift, the first of its kind in Japan. Ride it one way after dark, when the cabins and the waterfront are lit.

Yokohama Bashamichi Ice

In 1869 a Bashamichi ice-water shop sold Japan's first ice cream, made of eggs, milk and sugar with ice shipped from Hokkaido. The custard flavour recreates it.

Gyokusentei

A Chinese cooks' staff meal that fed the postwar docks, sealed under a thick gravy so it is still scalding at the last mouthful. Standard on menus here, and effectively nowhere else in Japan.

Shomyoji and Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa Bunko

The arched bridge was rebuilt in 1986 from a temple map painted in 1323, so the view across the pond is deliberately a medieval one. Behind it is the oldest surviving warrior-clan library in Japan.

Okurayama Memorial Hall

A Greek-temple exterior over Japanese timber interiors, in a style no other building in the country uses. It is a working community hall open until 22:00, so you walk in and find residents rehearsing.

Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery

Perry asked for a burial ground with a view of the sea. The grounds open only on weekend afternoons, and the graves include the engineer who built Japan's first railway.

Osanbashi Yokohama International Passenger Terminal

A 400 m folded timber roof with no columns and no steps anywhere on it, so a wheelchair reaches every point a walker does. It never closes.

Kishamichi

A 1911 harbour railway turned promenade, crossing open water on its original 1909 American-built bridges with the rails still set into the path. Walk it after dark towards the skyline.

Uchiki Pan

Japan's first Western-style white loaf was baked here. The England loaf is still raised on a hop-derived starter, as it has been continuously since 1888.

Yokohama Archives of History

The 1854 Convention of Kanagawa was signed on this spot. The courtyard camphor descends from the tree in the woodcut of Perry's landing, and survived a fire and an earthquake.

Kiyoken Yokohama Factory

The rice is steamed to stay chewy when cold and the box is shaved wood that pulls moisture out. Inside is a gourd-shaped soy bottle that households here keep by the drawerful.

Nakadori and Shioda

Okinawans came to build the landfill and could not go home after 1945. Residents now hand out their own map of 19 Okinawan restaurants, with opening hours and what to order.

Yamate Western Houses

Seven furnished treaty-port residences within a twenty-minute walk, all free. One is by Frank Lloyd Wright's assistant, and its old kitchen is now a cafe.

Koganecho

In 2005 police closed every business in a post-war red-light strip under a railway viaduct. Instead of demolishing the tiny cubicles, the city filled them with artists.

Sojiji

One of only two head temples of Soto Zen, with around 200 monks in residence. Training monks run free precinct tours with zazen instruction, no booking.

Music Chronicle Yokohama

Pick a record from a period list and they put it on for you. The collection belonged to a jazz kissa founded in 1933, where future stars came to study records they could not afford to buy.

Shinko Pier

Not one festival but about thirty nights a year of five-minute firework shows at 19:00, free to watch from anywhere on the harbour. Be in position by 18:45.

Hara Model Railway Museum

Heavy brass models on genuine metal track, so you hear wheel on rail and see sparks from the overhead wire. One man's lifetime collection of about 6,000 vehicles.

Nihon-Odori

Sailors named three harbour towers the King, the Queen and the Jack. Stand at all three places where they line up and, the city says, your wish comes true. One spot is a plate in the pavement everyone walks over.

Tokyo Skytree

Guinness certified it in 2011 and nothing has taken it since. The height was chosen because 634 reads as Musashi, the old name for this stretch of country.

Toyosu Market

Toyosu handles more seafood than anywhere else in the world. The bluefin auction runs for an hour before dawn, and the good viewing deck is balloted.

Meguro Parasitological Museum

Two floors, 300 specimens on show and 60,000 in the library, founded by one doctor in 1953. It costs nothing and takes donations.

Ryogoku Kokugikan

Six honbasho are held in Japan each year and three of them are here. Fifteen days each, and the whole thing is over in seconds at a time.

teamLab Borderless

Rooms with no fixed walls, where the works wander between them and react to you. It out-drew the Van Gogh Museum and holds the Guinness record for it.