Yokohama

Our Japanese adventure continues with exploring the city of Yokohama where Nick and Sachiyo lived when Nick first started coming to Japan for work in 2011.  Nick gave us a detailed tour of the city our first day there and then we stayed over night at the Royal Park Hotel located in the Landmark Tower which is 73 stories.

Yokohama is a large Japanese port and big tourist attraction, located just south of Tokyo, with lots of upscale shopping, restaurants, an amusement park,

and museums like the Cup of Noodles Museum 

where you can make your own recipe of a Cup of Noodles.

The area of the Landmark Tower is built on re-claimed land in the 90's so everything is very new and modern.

My favorite part was Chinatown which is Japan's largest Chinatown and one of the largest Chinatowns in the world with over 500 shops.

We just happened to be strolling through Chinatown at lunchtime

which is lucky for us because there is food everywhere

with lots to choose from

like these nikuman, steamed buns with meat inside.

Steamed buns and dumplings are popular in China and you can watch them being made through the restaurant windows.

We also had some shumai, another type of steamed dumplings with pork and shrimp.

Here are some black Cup of Noodles with quail egg.

The noodles are black by using bamboo charcoal during processing.  I like the panda effect.

There was lots of other Chinese food we passed, like fresh duck.

We eventually stopped and had a cup of flowering tea.

I've had this tea once before in San Fransisco and remembered how beautiful and flavorful it was.

Sometimes it is called Blooming Tea.

Each one consists of a bundle of dried tea leaves wrapped around one or more dried flowers. These are made by binding tea leaves and flowers together into a bulb and as they sit in the hot water, the flower "blooms".  Gorgeous!

Our second night in Yokohama, we had dinner at Din Tai Fung, which I wrote about earlier this year when Nick came to Seattle for Super Bowl weekend.

Din Tai Fung

This is the one Nick had a punch card for because he ate here so much.  The dumplings are addicting.

Again, we could watch them being made through the window.

Nick had to remind us of the proper way to eat them by dipping them into the sauce, 

puncturing them with your chop stick to let the steam out and then eat them.

But first we had some appetizers of (from left to right) chicken, pickled cucumbers and jelly fish - which was actually really good. The jelly fish tasted like mushrooms.

We ordered sides of water spinach and pork and shrimp fried rice.  Delicious.

Nick and Sachiyo like to order dessert when they come here and they always order this traditional Japanese dessert called annin-dofu which is a milk almond pudding.

  

They like this dessert because it will leave a good taste in your mouth after a big dinner.  We ordered a plain and a mango flavored and it hit the spot.

Sometimes Nick and Sachiyo will make this dessert at home from a package mix 

that you can find at Muji.

Dai Tai Fung in Japan is a lot different than in America because there are lots of different menu items (like jelly fish and annin-dofu). Nick and Sachiyo think the dumplings are fresher and hotter in Japan because in America you see the servers carrying 10 stacks of steamer baskets or higher to impress customers. If you get the one on the bottom, your dumplings won't be that hot and fresh and dumplings taste better the fresher they are.  The restaurant is not as big as in Seattle or Bellevue which are both huge with long waits.  We also had to wait in Yokohama but they had nice chairs lined up for us to sit on as we waited.  As people were called, we'd move up a chair until we got closer and closer to the front. What a nice way to treat your customers.

We enjoyed our two days in Yokohama and can understand why Nick wanted to live here the first 3 years he came here to work.