Up early in the morning – of course, especially with all the time change and everything, we don’t have access to a gym, so we just walked through the airport to loosen up. Did our errands, got cash, recharged our Suica cards, bought our bus tickets for the transfer into Yokohama then walked some more.
Played around with the Godzilla statue, wandered up to the observation deck, walked through re-creations of old Tokyo bridges, shops and restaurants. Stopped at all the wild vending machines – beer of course, but phone cases? Personalized phone cases with your own photos? Looked at all the plastic food in the restaurant area that was designed to look like little ancient streets. We love Japan! Great way to work out the stiffness and kinks of the airplane.
Back in the room, we freshen up and then could not resist ordering extra coffee packets from the robot. Yes, the robot! OMG. So much fun. We watched the app that showed tracked the order: order confirmed, delivery on the way with anticipated arrival time, then opened the door when the robot knocked on the door to deliver our coffee packets. What can we say? Loving it!
Later, at the appointed time, we through the terminal to the bus area to catch our 10:40am bus –the only passengers who board at Terminal 3. Perfect, front row seats on our private bus. Private only until the next terminal, but no matter, 30 minutes later we were deposited within a minute walk from our hotel, the Hotel New Grand, right across the street from Yamashita Park. We know we are way too early to check in, but it is Japan – everyone is so nice and accommodating. We drop our bags and ask the concierge if they have received an International package for us. Yep. Sure enough, out she comes with a package from Chase. Backstory: Our card was hacked on Monday, a day before we left. We called Chase and they said they would send the new card to our hotel in Yokohama. To say we were skeptical would have been putting it mildly, but hey, we need our credit card and it sure wasn’t us that made the card vulnerable – we just got this new card after it was hacked twice! Sigh. But seriously – there was the card – Internationally shipped virtually overnight. The card actually beat us to Yokohama arriving yesterday even before we landed!
We’re golden – and ready to go off to find some lunch. As our afternoon plans are to visit the Customs Museum, we head around the park and over to the Red Brick Warehouse which is sort of in the same direction. We waffle on whether to do the chicken restaurant or the dumplings but end up with our favorite meal of Omu-rice at Tachibanatei. We love their version of omelet over rice – so rich and creamy and good. Ed added an order of Katsu and it was totally enough to live the rest of the day and tomorrow morning on!
After lunch, we meander over to the Customs Museum which has fabulous exhibits of illegal drugs that were caught being smuggled into the country: tons of liquid uppers, 24 Kg of Meth hidden in a 2-meter-tall stone shipped from Mexico, two glass cases full of duplicate items (like Versace scarves, Louis Vuitton purses, dolls, etc.) that we had to decide which was real and which was counterfeit. Plus tons of information about the history of the Port and the Customs operations, a timeline of the changing imports and exports in Yokohama, printed brochures with an amazing amount of info – stats on custom duties and tax collections; different types of products and trade statistics shipped into different ports within the Yokohama jurisdictions; drug seizure numbers (the amount of Meth coming in is astonishing!), various ways of smuggling (297K of Meth inside a laser machine, 5K in a box of candy, cannabis liquid disguised as pet shampoo) and a whole section on Custom-Kun, the mascot of Japan Customs modeled after the customs drug detector dogs! Totally interesting. Plus, we could go around and collect stamps from different stations, then show them to the docent who gave us a prize – a little Custom-Kun sticker. Sweet.
Having still a couple hours before we can check in, we hit the Don Quixote – with all their Kit Kats! – and the 7-11 for supplies before returning to the Hotel New Grand where we checked into our amazing room on the 10th floor overlooking the park, the cruise terminal and the city of Yokohama. Fantastic.
We hung out in the room for a while, got organized, then walked up the street to Minatoan Sohonten, a great little ramen shop, for dinner. Assorted Tempura and Kamo Nanban (Duck Soba) later, we were happy little campers as we headed back to the hotel, stopping at the “Create” store on the way – which was a weird mix of pharmacy, beauty products and groceries, and really cheap. Definitely on our shopping list.
Back at the hotel, we just hung out, alternately watching the glowing lights of Yokohama through our huge windows on the 13th floor and watching Netflix until we were ready for bed after a very successful first day in Yokohama.
Andiamo 