Express Trains and Why They Are Great

For the most part, our weekend was fairly uneventful. We are still getting settled into our house, so we did a bit of driving around this weekend to check out the neighborhood, to get some much needed groceries, and to listen to our car radio - the only radio available to us for the time being. We also met with a representative of JCOM, our future cable TV, internet, and telephone provider, so that we could sign a contract and indicate which rooms in the house will have TV, internet, and telephone. JCOM is scheduled to be back on Thursday (Thanksgiving morning) to install everything, so we will finally be able to communicate with the outside world from our home.

On Sunday, we got adventurous and decided to head up north to Yokohama, which is only about 20 miles away, but it's as far away from Yokosuka as we've been without tour guides. We took a local train (aka- the slow train that stops at all stops along the way) from Mabori Kaigan all the way up to Yokohama, which took nearly an hour. From there, we took a transfer train over to Yokohama's Chinatown area, which is filled with all kinds of shops and restaurants. We grabbed lunch from a street vendor who provided us with some wonderful pork on a stick, sweet rolls, and something that Nicki and I later dubbed "the pork burger". I wish at times like these that I knew the Japanese names for the food so I could look it up on Google to find out more info, but for now a visual description is all I can provide. After lunch, we walked through the streets of Chinatown to encounter all of the beautiful sights and smells.



From Chinatown, we hopped back on the train and went closer to the port area, to a part of town nicknamed "MM21", which is short for Minato Mirai 21. The 21 stands for 21st Century, as this part of town was considered futuristic. MM21 is the home of the tallest building in Japan, Landmark Tower. We hear that the view from the top is spectacular, but our energy levels were on empty by the time we got there, so we decided to save the elevator ride to the top for a later date. We did stop for a few minutes in Queen's Square to watch a street performer juggle an apple, a knife, and another object while on stilts to the delight of a few hundred spectators. We also walked around the Square to check out the views around the harbor, including one of the largest ferris wheels I've ever seen. Unfortunately, we were all a bit too tired to scratch the surface of MM21, but we'll definitely head back over there later to get a better feel of what's there.



On the way home from Yokohama Station, we were able to fit onto a crowded express train. The express trains skip most stations and only stop along the main city routes. I believe we stopped at about 4 or 5 stops between Yokohama and Yokosuka, which took no more than 30 minutes - much better than our local train ride earlier in the day. I've tried to avoid express trains locally, because they are usually much more crowded than the local trains, but for longer rides, I think the express train is the only way to go.