Yokohama in the Snow

Hello all,

Yesterday was a snowy day. Pretty damn snowy. I thought I left all the snow behind in Europeland, but alas, to no solace...

In the news, the weather was predicted to be windy and wet, but not snowy. It surprised everybody that there was snow, but startled all because of the sheer amount of it. In the Tokyo area alone fell around 8 centimeters, which is pretty damn much for an area that rarely sees snowfall.

Anyway, yesterday was also the day of the coming of age day (Seijin no Hi) for those turning 20 years old, so most of the girls on the streets were dressed in beautiful Kimono and the guys in smart suits. The weather wasn't playing any parts, so they really had a horrible day regarding the weather. However, the  faces were wearing smiles and at our station, a small festival was organised for them.

At the festival, due to the weather, they were giving away soup, amazake (sweet warm fermented rice soup with alcohol) and wood-ripened saké they received as gifts from the big department store, Isetan and the local railway company, Odakyu.

It was 11:00 in the morning, so our day started out well! We kept on drinking small amounts of alcohol to keep our bodies warm during the day, since we had quite some distance to cover.

The plan was to to go to Yokohama and visit the model train and cup noodle museum in the Minato Mirai area. Ignoring the weather, as good Japanese (hurr hurr hurr), we pulled our plan through and bested the snow with all our might.

At the model train museum I was unfortunately unable to take pictures, but it was a pretty impressive museum I can say. Almost all the models there are hand made by one man during his lifetime, so you could say it's a memorial to his lifetime achievements.

 After the model train museum, the real trouble began, since we had to walk all the way from that place to the cup noodle musuem. It was maybe only eight blocks away from our starting point, but the strong winds of the Minatomirai high-rises and the snow made it a very hard road to take.

However, we somehow managed to make our way to the cup noodle museum, which is more a celebration of an industrial giant, where we treated ourself on -what else- noodles!

The museum was an interesting experience and had a good eye for detail, art, entertainment and food of course. I can recommend this place for any student or ex-student to pay reward to the inventor of the foodstuffs of thinkers and survivors in life.

The amount of noodles we ate wasn't really much in the museum, so we decided to head for downtown Chinatown for a good meal.

I must say, it's totally the opposite of the classy Ginza we visited the day before. Ginza is nice if you like that kind of stuff, but I'm more a down-to-earth guy who likes to get a taste of what the working class eats. I think when you eat like the locals do, you can get to understand them better as well. It's one of those virtues in life maybe.

The meal was cheap and very tasty. I had some Tantan-men soup and dumplings (very traditional combination) and a Highball (whiskey soda). A word on that.

I'm known as a beer drinker, but a Highball really opened up a new perspective for me. I don't fancy straight whiskey that much, but watered down on ice, it really gives it another taste and makes it quite mature in atmosphere. I think I'll stick to this for a while. Just to see how it works out between us two.

With a small wine tasting at the station in China town, I managed to impress the salesman on my 'knowledge' on wine (it had a broad taste). I don't know shit about wine though, but I guess I was right on target here. That concluded the day, which was tiring, but a great day out with my sweet girlfriend.