Yokohama

2 weeks behind on this post. Life is busy. Yokohama is on the south side of Tokyo and we had yet to visit there. Even though our friends from America, the Saharas, live there. But between state’s of emergency due to Corona and other life events, we just never had the chance to make it down there. The main purpose of this trip was to ship my Integra to America. But since we were there, we rented an Airbnb and toured the city with our friends.

It was an expensive drive. The inner Tokyo highway is about $13 to use. But because the roads were so confusing, I accidentally got off and back on twice. So I spent $39 in tolls. Oh, and Heather did it 4 times separately since she followed me down in her car. So as a family we spent $91 in tolls! I guess that’s the price of learning how to drive in Tokyo.

But I made it to the shipping docks successfully. It was called the Pakistan port. Apparently Japanese used car exports to Pakistan are big business these days. I was able to communicate with a guy who was very patient with my Japanese ability and managed to get the car to the staging area.

After I took off the license plates and signed it away, I said goodbye and I hope to see you in America! Its on a boat called “The Courageous Ace”! Sounds pretty reliable to me.

After taking care of that business, we met up at our airbnb. It was the smallest one we’ve ever had. The kitchen was in the foyer. But it was clean and cozy, and we didn’t do anything in there except sleep. So it was perfect.

Saturday (June 12), before meeting up with our friends we had to hit up some Ichiran Ramen! The kids have come a long way since we first arrived in Japan. They know the drill now. It has become so much easier to take them to a ramen restaurant and eat in individual booths at the counter.

Next we went on a walk through China Town. Its at least the biggest China Town in Japan. And I heard its the biggest one outside of China. Although I heard that from my barber and I can’t confirm his reliability. In any case, it was really big and it was really cool. Everything just seemed so bright and freshly painted. And the food looked delicious. But we’ll get back to the food later.

Then we went to downtown Yokohama and found a candy apple shop. They specialized in only candy apples. It was a cool little shop and the apples were $6 each. The ones at the Ohio State Fair are definitely better, but this was a good experience to try once.

Finally we were able to meet up with our friend’s at a nearby park! The girls played for about an hour and a half. For some reason they thought it was fun to fill up their hat with grass and dump it on each other. Nathan and I just kicked a ball around. And we saw a golden retriever that was shaved to look like a lion.

After the park we went back into China Town and got some dinner this time. We did an all-you-can-eat. It wasn’t buffet though. We had to just keep ordering dishes and they brought them out. It was really delicious. But I just want some good old American-Chinese General Tso’s chicken.

It was already 7:30 by the time we got out of there. But they wanted to show us one more cool part of Yokohama. It was called “Hammerhead” and it was down on the ocean. There was a cool night view of the city and all the cool young couples hanging out. This was definitely the trendy part of Yokohama. The kids loved running around the open space at night. So we took some pictures and then went to a special 7-Eleven with American import beers. Unfortunately no Bud Light. But they had all the hipster beers, which were still a welcome taste compared to the general brew in Japan.

That was it for our day with the Saharas. We hope to see them again someday. It was sad to say goodbye this time. So we parted ways and went to bed. On Sunday, before heading home, we went into the shopping district. We found a t-shirt that cost over $1000. That’s dollars, not yen. Heather touched it, but I was not worthy and too scared. While Heather finished up shopping. I took the kids to the super sad rooftop “amusement park”. The kids loved it though. And we had to go get Ichiran one more time. Ichiran twice in 2 days. That’s a good ratio.

After that we headed back to Utsunomiya!