Yokohama and Kamakura

March 5, 2010

This morning I was half-woken by a thunderstorm. I say half-woken, because despite the bright flashes of lightning and the sound of thunder, my body physically refused to get out of bed and open my eyes for more a few seconds. On the other hand, I couldn’t very well sleep through it. Not when I could feel the thunder crash upon me like a tsunami and rumble through the apartment like an earthquake.

This storm, by the way, has nothing to do with the real topic of my newsletter, which is my trip to Yokohama. But it seems appropriate symbolically, given that my sightseeing activities ended up being—dare I say it—stormy.

Not that it started off with any particular trouble. The first day of my trip—Saturday, February 27th—was nothing more than travel: a two hour bus ride to the airport, a two hour plane ride to Haneda airport, a half an hour bus ride to Yokohama station, another half an hour walking in a slow daze with my black duffle bag hanging off my shoulder and my guidebook open my hand while streams of people swept by me. You know, the usual. I got to my hotel at 4:30 and spent the rest of the night reading.

The next day was Sunday, and the only full day I had for sightseeing. So naturally, it was raining. I sighed, wrapped my stuff in plastic bags, and headed out the door. Now, my hotel room was a very nice temperature: warm, but not overheated. Not so when I stepped outside. It was freezing, and I had foolishly left my gloves in the hotel room. Rather than go back for them, I pressed on for the station, thinking the weather would get warmer as the morning grew later.

That was a mistake.

I came to Kamakura Station around 9:00. Kamakura is a small, but historically significant city only a half hour from Yokohama. It was established as the base for Minamoto Yoritomo in 1180, and the government he set up later became known as the Kamakura Shogunate, the name of the age the Kamakura era. What Kamakura is really famous for, though, is the Big Buddha. I decided to see this first.



I wasn’t disappointed by the Big Buddha. Unlike the one in Nara, it did not crouch in a dimly-lit hall, but rather sat, starkly, among the cloistered pines and distant hills. There was also no fanfare leading up to the Big Buddha. I paid for my ticket… and there it was. And this is what made it so impressive. Like a mountain or a river, it needed nothing. It simply was.

Although my guidebook warned me that crowds swarmed the Big Buddha on weekends, I only saw a few people here and there. This might have been due to my timing—it was still early in the morning—but personally, I think the rain was keeping people away. It was pounding steadily on my umbrella, forming puddles in the ground. Try as I might to step carefully, my shoes splashed and the hem of my pants became wet. Rain alone I might have been all right with. Possibly. But unlike in Kagoshima the rain did not wrap me in a warm blanket of humidity. It was cold. My hand holding the umbrella slowly froze and none of the many souvenir stands were selling any gloves.



I am of the opinion that the best way to explore a city is on foot or by bicycle, wherein you can really get a feel of the physically geography of the area. My original plan had been to walk the hiking course from the Big Buddha to the north Kamakura Station, a good 90 minutes, stopping along the way to explore small shrines and temples along the way. Half an hour of standing in the rain and those plans went out the window.

Instead I took the train to Engaku Temple and later rode the bus to Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. Both had interesting histories, the former having a faint connection to Kublai Khan’s failed invasion of Japan and the latter being founded by Minamoto Yoritomo himself. Unfortunately, none of these things came across in the places themselves. The temple was a temple and the shrine was a shrine, beautiful in their own way, but similar to dozens I’ve seen across Japan.

In the meantime, I was getting wetter and wetter. Shrines and temples are open buildings for the most part, and all the benches were waterlogged. I bought a hot lemon tea from one of the vending machines and briefly used that to warm my hands. It occurred to me that I was not really enjoying Kamakura. And so my plans shifted again. I’d just go back to Yokohama. There was a museum I wanted to see, and it wasn’t open Mondays (my only other sightseeing day). I’d go there.



By the time, I made it to the train platform again, the rain had stopped and flits of sunshine could be seen between the clouds. Figures.

As I sat on the heated train benches, I kept noticing the kanji for “tsunami alert” sliding across the message board, between announcements of upcoming destinations. Due to this alert certain train lines were being suspended. In fact, as I discovered upon reaching Yokohama Station, my train line was being suspended. This was not only the train that went to the museum, but the same line that took me to my hotel.

Why were the trains being suspended? Was the area closed off, too? Was I in danger? There were no English messages. Everyone in the station seemed to be going along their business as usual. But, really, what did that mean? Did people really stop what they were doing just because a disaster might hit? I imagined people hurrying here and there, caught up in their lives, right up until the moment an enormous wave blotted them out. It was easy enough to imagine. I was as wrapped up in my own life as anyone else; despite my worries, I mostly just wanted to get to my museum as quickly as possible.

Eventually, I found out the subway was still in operation, and a few minutes later I walked up to the Yokohama Archives of History. A museum my guidebook mentioned had good English signs. A museum which I hoped would mention Yokohama’s role in the Bakumatsu era, my favorite time period in history. A museum which was closed until April for remodeling purposes.

I was floored. I had cut short my trip to Kamakura for this museum, and it was closed!



I drowned my sorrows in the Silk Museum, and then decided to check out a few smaller museums in the hour or so I had left. The lady at the counter told me the three individual exhibitions were 200 yen each, but it was 500 yen for a combination ticket. So I bought the combination ticket and went to check out the displays.

Two of the exhibits had no English signage whatsoever. If it were an art museum, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was not an art museum. It was the Museum of Urban Development and a special exhibit about—I’m not even sure—a Westerner and piping in the city? Now, yes, I can read Japanese, but I’m not proficient enough to read something as highly specialized as that. At this point, I was pretty pissed off. The lady might have warned me that there was no English before I bought the ticket. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t tell I was a foreigner. I wrote an angry note (in Japanese) and stuck it in their questionnaire box on my way out.

By the time I went back to my hotel, I was practically in tears, I was in such a bad mood. Nothing had gone as planned. I had dealt with cold rain, a confusion of tsunami warnings, and now these stupid museums blocking me off from the information I craved. This was my one full sightseeing day and it was a complete waste. An expensive waste. It cost money to come to Yokohama: between transportation, lodging, and meals, it came to a total of just over 100,000 yen (1,000 dollars). And for what!

“The seminar had better be good or I’ll have thrown away my money for nothing,” I grumbled through my teeth.



I did eventually calm down and visit the famous large “Chu ka gai” or Chinatown, which was only a few feet from my hotel. While I had no particular interest in it, the bright, gilded facades eventually distracted me from my misery.

That night I tried to watch the Olympic figure skating gala, but the “tsunami alert” kept flashing prominently in the corner of the T.V. screen. I switched off the T.V. and looked out the window. My hotel was only a 15 minute walk from Yokohama Port. If a tsunami came, what would happen? I imagined a wall of water barreling down the streets. I was on the sixth story. I was high enough to survive a tsunami. Right? Or would the water pressure cause the building to collapse? What if the water came pouring through the building, filling my room like a fish tank, until I couldn’t breathe?

Such morbid imaginings did nothing to ease my anxiety.

Needless to say, a tsunami did not hit and I survived the night quite easily. I spent Monday morning walking along Yamashita Park and checking out the old foreigner district, whose lush houses were open to the public. I had wanted to check out a museum which had artifacts related to the black ships, but, of course, it too was closed. Because it was Monday.

I had a navy blue suit jacket under my coat and wore tight, slightly high-heeled black shoes instead of my comfy white tennis. Formal business wear. The shoes pinched at the toes and did nothing to cushion against the hard concrete. After a morning of walking up and down the town, blisters had formed between my toes, and I limped my way to the seminar. Stupid cheap shoes. I cursed my own stinginess.

Seminar for Returning JETs: Annex Room. So said the sign at the Pacifico Yokohama when I arrived at around noon. The top of the building crested into white waves. It was almost the same color as the overcast sky. There was a heavy fog.



At the risk of being anti-climatic, I am not going to go into detail about the seminar, which took place from March 1st until March 3rd. We checked-in, received our materials, chatted with people we knew, sat at the tables, and took notes as speaker after speaker bombarded us with information. There was information on Reverse Culture Shock, Resumes, and Grad School. There were sessions on specific careers: journalist, translator, teacher; there were Q and A panels; there was a job fair which was mostly grad schools and volunteer organizations. Start preparing now, they said. Network, they said. Join the JET Alumni Association, they said again and again.

It was a business seminar. Like any other business seminar, I suppose.

But for some reason, I enjoyed it. True, the sheer amount of information overwhelmed me in the beginning and exhausted me in the end. But I was grateful to have it. It was not all as vague and obvious as I made it sound either; there were websites and email addresses attached. Moreover, it was good to hear from people who started off like me, having no idea what to do, and ended up with interesting careers. I reflected a little during the seminar and I will keep reflecting later on.

But now, my dear patient reader, who has stuck with me through this long and tedious email, I would like to mention one last thing before I wrap up. The food. You did not think I would forget such an important facet, did you?



In Kamakura, I stopped at a small eclectic restaurant called “Umitsuki” or “Seamoon.” As I was browsing through menu, I laughed out loud. What I had thought was a simple picture of a maguro donburi (tuna sashimi rice bowl) was in fact red slices of basashi lying over rice. Basashi: raw horse meat. A specialty of Kumamoto, just one prefecture up. I did not order the basashi, by the way, opting instead for a safer vegetable and clam noodle dish, but I did use the basashi to launch into a conversation with the restaurant staff. It turned out the restaurant owner was originally from Kumamoto. The cook went to college nearby, too, in Miyazaki. The things you learn.

Most prefectures in Japan have their own special food. Kumamoto has basashi. Kagoshima has kurobuta (black pork) and shochu (potato-based liquor). Hokkaido has… every food known to man. But what Yokohama’s specialty food item was, I never found out. I was too busy gleefully stuffing myself with foreign food.

They had a Subway in the building next door to the Pacifico Yokohama. I have never seen a Subway in Japan. They had Krispy Kreme and Cold Stone! Their Italian restaurants served lasagna and gnocchi. But best of all, on the fifth floor of the World Porters building they had the most delicious Mexican food I have ever found in Japan. Japan’s concept of Mexican food is limited to tacos. That’s it. But this restaurant served pork enchiladas and chicken taquitos and mango margaritas. They had a salsa bar with homemade salsas, not that canned stuff or that vaguely spicy red sauce made with Chinese peppers that I found at a different “Mexican” restaurant. The food was so delicious. It tasted like an actual Mexican restaurant I would find at home. I was so happy.

Yeah, I know, you-who-can-eat-Mexican-food-anytime-you-want are laughing your heads off at me. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll laugh right back at your Japanese restaurants with their so-called sushi and their lack of soba.

On Wednesday, March 3rd, the conference came to a close around noon, and after grabbing lunch and some souvenirs, I went back home. Besides getting lost in Yokohama Station and taking a half an hour to get to the bus stop across the street (which, in my defense, was actually the main highway), my return trip was problem free. I got home at 10:00 PM, dropped my stuff on the floor, and curled up on my bed in a tired heap.

Three days later, I have yet to fully recover.