The things that happened here and only here, told properly, then tied to what you can see, taste and book while your ship waits.
Yokohama is Japan's great port town, where most Japan cruises begin and end, and the fishing village that became Japan's door to the world in 1859. For forty years everything foreign entered Japan through this one gate, beer, ice cream, railways and newspapers among them, and silk shipped from here paid for modern Japan. It has Japan's largest Chinatown, and most ships dock at Osanbashi, a pier whose free rooftop deck faces the Minato Mirai skyline.
The treaty said Kanagawa. The shogunate built the port at Yokohama instead — a fishing village of about a hundred households, safely off the highway, where foreigners could be watched. It worked, and then it worked far too well.
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For about forty years, everything foreign entered Japan through one gate. The result is a city where you can still eat, drink and walk through the moment each thing arrived — and several of them were invented here rather than merely imported.
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For half a century, one commodity dominated Japan's exports and one port shipped almost all of it. Silk bought the railways, the warships and the factories — and one silk merchant spent his share on moving ancient buildings into a garden you can walk through.
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More than six hundred shops and restaurants (the city’s figure) in roughly a fifth of a square kilometre — the largest Chinatown in Japan and one of the largest in Asia. It exists because when Britain and Japan tried to trade, neither could read the other, and Chinese clerks could read both.
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A truck driver opened a ramen shop in southern Yokohama in 1974 and combined two things nobody had combined: pork-bone broth from Kyushu and soy-sauce seasoning from Tokyo. Every one of the thousands of shops that copied him puts the character for "house" in its name.
Read the storyCruise seasons run spring to autumn, but the port changes underneath them.
Sankeien's plum grove goes first; the crowds have not started.
The Ooka River walk in Minato Mirai is lit at night and lined the whole way.
Dry, mild, long evenings on the Osanbashi deck. Roses at Yamashita Park.
Sankeien in rain is quiet and green. The indoor plan works unusually well here.
Evening on the waterfront is the move; midday is not.
Humid enough that Chinatown's air conditioning becomes the itinerary.
Late September turns comfortable and the cruise calls stack up.
The single best month: dry, warm, and every terminal busy.
Late November into early December is the peak, with evening illumination.
Winter air gives the sharpest harbour views of the year. Chinese New Year falls here.
