Up early – of course – we walk through the now bustling terminal for our morning exercise.  We also have a mission to find the ATM (simple, handled), buy our bus tickets to the Intercontinental (not so easy, but we finally figure it out when we use Google translate to figure out the screens) and the Suica card machines and buy our Welcome card – which is the tourist version of the local’s transportation card.  If we buy the tourist version we don’t need to pay the 500 Yen deposit, but the trade off for no deposit is that the card is only good for 30 days.  But that should work for us, as the last day falls on our last day in Osaka/Kobe.  Plus, if there is any  money left on the cards, we can use it in the 7&I or Family Mart to buy stuff. Perfect.

Finding the machines proves to be a little challenging as there are a bunch of different ones that are just for individual trips and not for the Welcome card.  Finally asking one of the girls in the information center we find the correct machine and get our cards.  Handled!  A quick coffee at a little café with signs on the table that say “Please eat without talking” – really?  And we head back to the hotel, past the ball cap and miscellaneous apparel vending machine, to shower, check out with the automated machine (crazy wild!) and head on into Yokohama for the Intercontinental – our home for the next couple of nights.

We had originally booked a booking.com taxi (at about $100) to get us to the harbor front, but we did some research and found this bus – that costs only 6 dollars each – and takes us right to hotel.  It is amazing.  A full size bus with an attendant who stored our bags, and in 30 minutes, voila!  We were there. 

It is way too early for us to check in, of course, so we hand over our bags to the concierge and go out to wander the area.  There is a fabulous park system here, all along the harbor, lined with cherry blossoms which are just getting to full bloom.  So of course that consumes all our wandering. The trees are so beautiful, there are tons of people out taking pictures including these 2 sweet little girls dressed in white frilly dresses on the top of a hill amidst the blossoms.  Yay!!! 

So lovely!  The weather is great, we’re so excited, warm and sunny.  We just walked all over, heading toward the Red Brick warehouses, which used to be working warehouses, now turned into retail shops and food stalls. Of course, it’s lunch time, so here we go!  Tons and tons of food stall restaurants to choose from, nothing in English.  We shopped around, this is too fun!  Thankfully they all had those plastic food plates display to show you what they served, and of course we used Google Translate on everything.  We finally ended up at a noodle shop and just took a picture of the plastic dish that we wanted – and voila!  Vegetable soba noodle soup for me, Pork soba noodle soup for Ed.  Perfect.

After lunch, we continued to wander around the harbor front looking at all the beautiful spring flowers. A perfect day for wandering.

We also walked up on the roof of the cruise pier where there is a park – yes, on the roof – that looks like the decks of a ship in all teakwood. We had great views across the harbor, we could even see the Diamond Princess across the bay at their homeport.  Too fun.    

Back at the hotel, we finally checked into a lovely room, with an excellent view across the harbor.  Hit the mall that is accessible across a skybridge connected to the hotel complex – there are a million malls here with everything you’d ever need from restaurants to retail to convenience stores!  Which is where we went for supplies – oh, cheap wine! – and then back to the hotel to freshen up. 

The hotel is also part of a huge convention center complex and there are some sort of student ceremonies going on and there are hundreds if not thousands of students in uniform all around, standing in line for pictures in front of this banner that is advertising their graduation, which is how we figure out what they are doing!   Back at the mall, we navigate our way to what is advertised as a seafood buffet restaurant. Ok, they are a little short on seafood, it is more an “around the world” buffet with dishes from different countries, which suits us just fine!  The signs by the dishes say “World Cruise” – sort of appropriate for us!  – and cover so many countries. Once again there was precious little English, we can’t read a word, but can get the idea from the country flag on each sign – so when we saw Sweden and meatball type things – aha, Swedish meatballs.  Hungary and chicken?  Chicken Paprikash.  It all worked.  Even if it was pricey for a buffet – but then again what isn’t here?  Although interestingly enough, the beer and wine was reasonably priced!  Go figure.

We walked back to the hotel, then hung out, marveling at the toilets (oh Japanese toilets!!  The noises, the heated seats, I want one!!!) and staring out at the gorgeous harbor view from our perch way above the water.