Uniquely
Things you can do here and essentially nowhere else. Not everything there is to do, just what you would travel for.
33 records·within 50 km30 mi
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Worth stopping for, but a few minutes rather than an afternoon. Statues, murals, markers and monuments.
10 entries
Kirin-en Park
William Copeland's Spring Valley Brewery, the ancestor of Kirin, stood here from 1869. The beer well survives inside a school fence, with a memorial stone in the park next door.
Yokohama Park and Yokohama Stadium
Japan's first international baseball match was played here in 1896. The 1934 relief of the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig All-Stars tour is outside the stadium gates.
Places to look at the city, the plains or the mountains from.
4 entries
Yokohama Port Symbol Tower
A free 58.5 m tower attached to a working Coast Guard signal station, the letter boards above your head directing real ship traffic. It stays empty while Marine Tower queues.
Not unique, and not pretending to be. Good things to do here that you could also do somewhere else.
51 entries
Kanteibyō
Buy the ¥500 offering set inside and staff walk you through five censers in a fixed order, starting with a god who has no statue. Then drop the crescent blocks for the sea goddess a block away.
Yokohama Chinatown
Skip the parade and follow the lions. The afternoon after the countdown, five coloured lions work the streets entering shops one at a time to pluck the greens for prosperity. Free and unticketed.
Yokohama History Museum and Otsuka-Saikachido site park
Five minutes from a new-town station plaza, a reconstructed moated village and its cemetery, found together. The outdoor park is free; the museum next door is paid.
Yokohama Park and Yokohama Stadium
Vendors walk the stands pouring the club's house beer from backpack kegs into branded cups. In summer the queue is for mikan-gōri, shaved ice with tinned mandarin.
Daikoku Parking Area
The largest parking area on the Shuto Expressway, wrapped inside a junction's spiral ramps and famous through car culture. You can only arrive by car, and late-night meets are actively shut down.
