Due to our Indian Visa fiasco, we had a few extra days in Tokyo and as we had our handy Japan Rail pass we could go on all the trains for free! So we took a day-trip down to Yokohama which is a really nice city. It's odd having a smaller city so close to one really big city, a bit like having Galway about 20 minutes from Dublin.

Our first stop was Chinatown, Yokohama having a large Chinese population due to it being a port city. The gates and temples were really bright and detailed as opposed to the slightly more restrained Japanese gates (torii) that we've seen so far. There was tonnes of people wandering about and some lady had a little terrier in a pram!One step up form having it in a handbag. Elaine has been finding it hard to get local food that is vegetarian, but we thought she'ld be OK with some sweetcorn soup in a Chinese restaurant… eh, not really, it had big bits of chicken in it, so poor Elaine was really brave and ate a bit, then headed to Starbucks for a cookie :(

Japan's tallest building, the Landmark Tower, is in Yokohama and we went up to the viewing deck on the 69th floor (hee-hee 69) in the fastest elevator ever. That's one of the great things about Japan, they don't just normal trains or elevators, they do really fast ones! I think we hit about 120m/s, which works out around 268mph! Shit, my ears popped after about 2 seconds in the lift. The view was a bit hazy from the top, but it was still slightly surreal to be up so high above everything else. Back down on terra firma, we hit Chinatown again to see it all lit up at night, and spent a bit too much time wandering around trying in vain to find the Yokohama Curry Museum, so the fun park in the bay was just closing and I didn't get to go on the crazy rollercoaster that goes into a hole in the ground. Boo-urns. We did have an Indian for dinner to make up for missing the curry museum. We were bloody knackered after all that so we fell into out tiny little bed in our tiny little room back in Tokyo.

Have a look at the photos on Flickr and drop me some comments!