Yokohama China Town

While walking through the lobby at the Prince Hotel, we came across this poster on one of the pillars:

 

 "A China Town in Japan?  That should be a fun place to visit!"  I thought.  My dad mentioned that he wanted to buy scallop powder as he learned that it was the secret to the best tasting saimin.  (Oops, not anymore!)  At home, he watched a TV show where famous chefs shopped at this exact spot to find the special scallop powder.  So we decided that we would catch the train to China Town the next day.  This is another benefit of not being on a tour . . . .

 http://www.yokohamajapan.com/things-to-do/chinatown/

Hyperdia search:  Shin-Yokohama Station to Kannai Station.  I looked up Yokohama China Town on the internet and found information that told me what station we would exit.  The site also told me that I would have a 14 minute walk to the area.  As we began to use this information more and more, we learned that when the Japanese say 10 minutes, it usually means 20 minutes.  Bring comfortable walking shoes on your trip.  You'll be walking a lot!

When we got off the subway, we climbed up the stairs and found ourselves on a busy street.  This happened to us many times on the trip as we came out of the station and didn't know what direction to walk next.  Sometimes we used our google maps app, but in most cases we asked someone for help.  In this case, we were lucky enough to start walking in the right direction and knew by the look of the buildings that we were in the right place.

After finding the endless streets of shops and restaurants, we walked around looking through windows as we were there at 9:00am and most businesses opened at 10 or even 11:00am.

When you visit an area like China Town please be sure to make note of where you exited the train station.  When you come up from below ground, there won't be any train station signs so you can lose your sense of direction easily.

Manapua?

 

There are many alleys filled with little shops.

 

There was even a Daiso store in this narrow alley!

My dad was able to find his scallop powder on this street!

We planned to spend half the day at China Town and the other half at a museum, so we left before lunch.  Afterwards, we felt that we should have dedicated a whole day to this area as there was so much to see.  It is definitely a stop that we will revisit on our next trip.