Text 30943, 75 rader
Skriven 2012-11-10 09:36:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Yokohama II 540
=======================
A standard American breakfast with an additional Japanese
section and a "Chinese selection," plus a few oddities.

From the first, bacon two ways, crisp and limp; "house-cured
ham," actually loin, barely cured, not very salty, a nice
though rather tough example of the piggish art; eggs every
which way, of which Lilli had a hard but not unpleasant
omelette.

Japanese: I tried two kinds of fish, an unidentified
mackerelly fish that might have been that beltfish thing
and salmon, both rather overcooked. There were also various
vegetable and noodle monstrosities, all appalling enough that
even the Japanese guests took a look and hurried away.

Of the Chinese selection, vegetable dumplings were filled
with pork and bok choy chopped together, vegetable enough
for me but perhaps not for someone who wanted vegetable
dumplings. Shrimp dumplings were the usual; chow mein
involved soy-soaked wheat noodles and shredded vegetables.

An oddity that I waited until the end to dare to sample was
spaghetti agli, olio, e peperoncini with the unexpected
addition of bitter melon. It was quite good, especially
paired with the ham, and I hoped that something even more
peculiar and interesting was going to be there tomorrow.

The ramen museum was closed, or so we thought; later other
documentation indicated that it was the cup noodle museum,
an offshoot of the original ramen museum in Osaka, that was
closed; the other ramen museum (transliterated raumen, if
you want to look it up) in Shin-Yokohama, had indeed been
open and had even had a special admission for seniors 60 and
above - Y50 (60c), but when we found this out it was way too
late to go. We looked into the possibility of taking the
Kirin brewery tour, but not only were the tours in Japanese
only, so was the reservation system, so we gave up on that.

We looked at the Landmark Tower from afar and decided that
was enough (it costs Y1000 to get in, or, I'm told, you
can go up to the bar for free, but the drinks there cost
Y1000 and more a pop).

As we had not managed to get to the Tokyo open-air museum,
Sankei-en Gardens seemed to be the next best thing. There
are various buses that go there, and we found one leaving
in two minutes, so we hopped it and took a tour of the
city; half an hour later, the announcements turned to
English, and shortly after we were there.

Beautiful gardens. Apparently this guy Sankei Hara, a
budding artist and poet, met a girl whose family owned the
biggest silk company in town, and they got married. Hara
eventually became the head of the company and is said
through his thinking outside the box to have saved the
Japanese silk industry, but the writings available onsite
might be a tad prejudiced. Anyhow, he became rich enough
to indulge in his hobby of collecting historic buildings,
which he moved to his estate in Yokohama. After the war,
this became a park open to the public.

Second to the Imperial East Garden, I'd say this was the
sightseeing highlight of the trip. It took us nearly three
hours to get through the site, and we were tired and foot
weary as we made our way to the bus stop, where it appeared
we had just missed one, with the next not to come for an
hour. At some point another bus came by, which did not go
back to the station, but by dint of asking for alternate
destinations, I somehow got the driver to drop us off at
another stop, where we could pick one up that did. And
actually, the bus we ended up getting on took us to the
southern end of Chinatown, by the hospital. Lucky us.

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