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The weekend seems to be the time for road trips! Me, Tip, Haydn, Stacey, Eric, Marguerite, Ping took 3 separate trains to get down to Yokohama to take in the harbour's sights and sounds. An hour and a half are leaving Shimotakaido we arrive in Yokohama and then had to spend 15-20 mins just getting out of the mall that was attached to the station! It took a decorative compass on the ground to point us in the right direction! But we did pass a nice outside rummage shop that I would have loved to had some time to spend it but everyone was pretty raring to get going.

We decided to make Chinatown our first destination- 3km or so from the station and we would stop anywhere along the way. It was sooo hot outside (I am guessing around 26 or 27) so went into a store along the way to cool down. WE found out at the station that there was a festival celebration with fireworks that night so there were tons of people around. They had street performers and kids a plenty, and the amusement park was crowded.

A long walk later we arrive in Chinatown, which looks mor elike CHina than any othe rpart of Japan. The most surreal thing about being in Yokohama's Chinatown vs. Toronto's was that in TO everyone speaks Chinese. I kept getting weirded out that everyone was speaking Japanese... So we were looking at thousands of restaurants, trying to figure out where to eat, when I hear this loud man making extremely loud and boisterous monkey noises. i figured it was a drunk or retarded person but when I look up it was STEVEN! with Kazuko and Iye. I have NO IDEA how they found us in Yokohama or even in Chinatown- none of us had cell phones. but they knew we were going to be there so they set out to look for us. Then Steven took us to this all you can eat Chinese place where we proceeded to sit and eat for about 2 hours. Even at the parties Mom and Dad throw I have never seen so much food in one place. Tip, Steven, and Ping just kept putting it away! I felt ill just looking at it...

Then we took a bunch of pictures at Yamashita park, walked along the water, and went to Aka-Renga which are two buildings that were used during the war as armouries but now they have been turned into shopping malls. As it was getting dark we could now see more and more people dressed in yukatas for the fireworks.

Even though we lost Haydn and Marguerite along the way, all 9 of us did manage to make it over another park for the fireworks. The propblem was finding somewhereon the ground to sit! There were thousands of people there! And when me and Marguerite went on a search for something plastic to sit on it was so difficult to move around! The police had set out very strict paths and you could not deviate past them! Really frustrating!

Then we found a garbge stand and I asked, in Japanese, if they had an extra plastic bag that we could have to sit on. My explanation was okay, but they ahd to go get their supervisor b/c I don't think they knew how to deal with me... I think that when a Japanese person encounters a non-Japanese person speaking Japanese to them, their brains immediately turn off.

But I did get a plastic bag to sit on!

So we saw the fireworks and walked back with thousands of other people to the train station and took another 3 trains to get home, getting inmy apartment door well after 11pm.

What a day, says me!