I'm not sure at what point it happened, but somewhere around the middle of my journey I made a huge effort to catch up on the thirty-odd podcasts I needed to catch up on, and as time has gone along I've actually managed to find a way to catch up so much that I had to download some new ones to fill up my iPod because I'd run out of things to listen to.
Sometimes exploring foreign climbs can get a little lonely, and although it isn't the same listening to different podcasts makes me feel like I have got someone with me, talking to me. I think subconsciously it helps me feel a little more secure about everything and a little less alone. I spend a lot of time walking from one place to another, and I feel that because I'm listening to talking rather than music, it still allows me to concentrate on what's going around me.
There are obviously times, like at the airport, in crowded areas, or late at night when I need to be extra alert and have my wits about me, but generally during the day I'd probably say that I spend the majority of the time with my headphones in.
In some cities, the noise of whatever I happened to be listening to certainly didn't drown out the sound of the din that was going on around me. Somewhere like Manila for example or Jakarta, there's simply no way to combat the noise in any surroundings. But to me that's part of what makes the experience. As strange as it sounds, when I first arrive somewhere I usually like to 'hear' what things sound like as it helps me get a sense of the place.
I often think of my travels in terms of experiences, and there is plenty to be said about the way in which sounds (an under-appreciated sense abroad) give you an understanding of what's going on around.
Not so much on the latter part of my journey, but in Vietnam and Cambodia, the evening's were as noisy as the days as instead of cars and people moving around everywhere you could hear the deafening sounds of bugs and insects. In Korea sounds fell into a different category as when all the lights come on you can hear music everywhere as businesses try to attract people towards their products or services by attacking their senses from two different angles.
It can often be hard to get away from the hum or buzz of a city, and although I feel like I'm someone who could fall asleep anywhere, staying nearby a main road on a couple of occasions definitely didn't help the quality of sleep I received.
A truly intriguing place draws you in with it's sights, but also it's sounds. It can tell you a lot about what's going on around you, and helps to build up a particular city's character in my mind...
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Unlike in earlier stages of my trip when three days would be the limit of my time in the country, the trio of days I have just spent in this fabulous city is just the starter for what I hope will be an excellent and enjoyable hat-trick of weeks in Japan - a country which is already leaving a positive impression on me in every way.
The only negative thing at the moment is my health which seems to be deteriorating on an almost daily basis.
I've been suffering for what seems like a few days now with some sneezes and a sore throat, but late last night and early this morning it appears to have developed into a head/ear ache which was making things very uncomfortable when I woke up.
Not that I know very much about it because science is hardly my strong point, but it's fascinating how your body works, and what you do to it obviously has a tremendous impact on the way it reacts to certain things.
I've been feeling under the weather a couple of times on this trip, but that's usually because of late nights combined with early mornings which I've never been able to cope with very well, and usually end up feeling terrible rather than tired the next morning.
I spent a lot of my childhood and adult life suffering with pretty much every allergy that was going, and for six months of the year my life would basically be misery as I'd be suffering from heyfever as well as an allergic reaction to pollen, grass and dust. Having a reaction every time you go near grass is a bit of an issue when you spend your time working as a PE teacher and playing lots of sports, although it would never bother my whilst I was doing these things and I'd only suffer for it afterwards. I always found it funny that my body would be able to somehow combat the symptoms when it was active and my mind was concentrated on doing things, but then as soon as I stopped along would come a torrent of sneezes, a flood of liquid from my nose and eyes and the world's itchiest pupils!
It's the same when you're ill as well. Sometimes you seem to be able to power through it, but then in idle moments you seem to be struck down as if your body was saving it all up until it had decided when the best time to affect you would be!
I haven't really been affected by allergies at all on this trip - it's strange that I never seem to get heyfever when I'm in a different country (a fantastic reason to live abroad) but who knows, maybe my sneezes are related to something that's affecting me here.
They started off pretty badly this morning but thankfully once I got out and about during the day I barely noticed I was suffering - naturally they've returned with a vengeance this evening!
I've tried not to let it spoil my day though, and certainly not my enjoyment of it.
I'd managed to get out and about quite a bit in my one and a half days in the city so far, but today it was time for some proper exploring with a route I'd planned that would take in a few different sights.
I feel like I have been quite lucky with the placement of my hotel in Yokohama so far. I'm obviously not that far from the centre as Yokohama Station is only three stops away on the subway, but being right by the pier and located quite close to pretty much all of the attractions has been a stroke of luck - I love getting things right by luck rather than judgement!
It was another bright and sunny day today without a cloud in the sky, and although I'm pretty close to the water here in Yokohama it was actually pretty humid with temperatures up around 25 degrees.
Feels like a totally different kind of heat than in some of the other parts of Asia I've visited, but I guess that has to do with the humidity levels being a lot lower here, and the presence of a breeze which makes it feel like a manageable 25 degrees rather than a dry and draining one.
As is usual when I scour through potential destinations, I thought about the ones which would bring the most entertainment, and a default activity for me, as people who've read through my blogs frequently will know, is going to the zoo.
Luckily for me in Yokohama there are actually three zoos and then two aquariums. Two of them are pretty close together, but over the other side of the city, and looking them up last night they seemed to be pretty amazing, but also extremely expensive so I looked for other options instead which would also allow me to do some other things with myself later on.
I discovered in my research there there is actually a rather small, but well regarded zoo close to the centre of the city which doesn't charge an entry fee, and decided to go there as it was walkable from my hotel and en-route to other destinations I'd planned to take in.
Although I've spent a lot of time in the air on this trip, I'd like to think that the thing I have done the most on this journey is walk. In a city like Yokohama it is pretty easy to do; the streets of Japan are very accessible and although trains clearly rule (in terms of the amount of them there are) and I've seen taxis and buses driving around, it seems like there are a large number of people taking advantage of things in the city being quite close together. That certainly isn't something that can be said about every Japanese city I'm sure.
I don't know where Yokohama ranks in terms of its size within Japan, but whilst I was out and about today I feel like it is a very relaxing and laid back place both during the day and at night - that could be a common theme throughout Japanese cities, I'm not sure. During the day the city streets are peaceful and there are lots of open, green spaces where you see people sitting down reading or just taking time out.
It reminds me a lot of Busan in Korea, especially due to its coastal connection too.
Nogeyama Zoo looked to be about twenty minutes or so walk from where I'm staying and I managed to get there by using the helpful signs near some of the metro stations that I passed on the way.
It's actually within a little park of its own which I walked around first and you had to climb up quite a large hill to access it.
On my way there I went down a street that seemed to be alive with action, even in the middle of the day. It had some shops playing loud music, plenty of restaurants which seemed to be doing a good lunchtime trade and then there were some arcades and Pachinko Parlors which were brightly lit up. I walked up and down several side streets intrigued by what was going on, and I really do find it fascinating to just take it all in from a distance.
Asian streets always seem to be so a-buzz with all sorts of different things going on, and even without lots of neon lights everywhere they are very interesting to me.
I continued walking and eventually made it to Nogeyama Park which I decided to walk around a little first before going to the zoo.
The gardens themselves were on a hill and there wasn't really much going on there aside from a few people sitting around chatting, and a couple of students reading on the benches which were dotted here, there and everywhere. Further to the back there was a basketball court where some men were playing a game, and just across from where they were was an observation deck which I decided to go and take a look out from before continuing on:
It wasn't anything to right home about as the level of the deck wasn't actually up that high, but you could see the roofs of buildings across the city and it gave you an idea of how far Yokohama sprawls out from the point where I was standing:
There was a little bit of a garden behind the basketball court which I always walked around just to see if there was anything there, but after completing my loop I went back towards the zoo.
As well as being pretty close to where I am staying, the other fantastic thing about Nogeyama Zoo is that it's free to enter. It's not that large, so isn't anything in comparison to Taipei or Shanghai Zoo, but it seemed to have a reasonable collection of animals, most of which I believe are native to Japan.
I picked up a map on the way which turned out to be completely in Japanese, but it had the zoo's layout on so that was all I needed. As it turned out, I didn't really require the map at all, firstly because the zoo wasn't that large, but also because the cages of each animals were numbered so all you had to do was follow the logical path all the way around - and be able to count!
They'd obviously gone for quantity of animals in this zoo as each cage you went towards there were only a couple of examples of them except for the flamingos where there was quite a lot:
They had bears, reptiles, giraffes and then most exciting of all for me, penguins and monkeys. Those are definitely the animals I spent most of the time looking at:
The penguins were all swimming around happily in the water, and there was one little girl rather bravely putting her hand through the bars. I think she might have got a nasty fright if her parent hadn't spotted!
Even though most of the animals were domestic there was a lion, a tiger and a bear also so not a comprehensive collection of animals, but considering it was free it certainly kept me entertained. It wasn't a very large complex, but the animals seemed to be well looked after which I guess is the most important thing.
One of the most difficult things about zoos is trying to make your way round and ensuring you see all of the animals, but I guess Nogeyama Zoo took the difficulty out of this by numbering there cages.
Once I was done with the zoo I headed back in the direction I'd just come from and then cut back down the lively street I'd seen earlier on in order to get to the Minato Mirai 21 District. MM as it's locally known is the central business district of Yokohama and houses the buildings which you've probably seen a couple of times on photographs like this one:
They probably represent the most famous 'attractions' in Yokohama, or are at least the most outstanding things here, and located close to the water they are pretty much the hub of where all the offices are in the city. They're connected to where I went on my first night, the Osanbashi area, by a couple of bridges and between this and the middle area which I'll discuss in a second, it's where you are most likely to find all the tourists in the city.
Having seen all of the most popular buildings in the city from a distance I thought that I'd might be nice to see them from a little closer up so I headed towards the biggest of them all which is the Yokohama Landmark Towers.
It's basically the closest that Yokohama has to a skyscraper and although it doesn't stand out quite so much as Taipei 101 because there are other tall buildings near it, it's quite clearly the thing that your eyes are drawn to first:
In order to get there from where I was I had to ride on several moving walkways which took you from the station up to the level of the Landmark Tower and then to get close you had to ride the horizontal escalators to get there.
Just in front of the landmark tower is a little port area for a boat known as the Nippon Maru. It is permanently docked in Yokohama and is now a museum, but before being turned into one it was a training vessel for the Japanese merchant marines. It's quite a grand looking ship and with it standing right in front of what is a grand looking building it makes for pretty spectacular viewing:
Across the water another noticeable thing you can see if Yokohama Cosmo World which is a miniature theme park on the middle island that I referred to earlier on. I walked from the area where the landmark tower is through Nippon Maru Memorial Park to look out over the water and get some photos of the large ferris wheel which has a massive time piece on the front of it:
The Cosmo Clock was the world's largest Ferris wheel until it was overtaken by the Tempozan Wheel in Osaka. It is a very impressive structure and can be seen from pretty much all over the city.
The Cosmo Park itself didn't appear to be open, but the Ferris wheel was spinning regardless and its coloured carriages rotating around certainly have a positive impact on the skyline:
I actually didn't get up close to the giant Ferris Wheel until later on, but was impressed from looking across the water. I continued walking down the pier area until I came to the PACIFICO Yokohama which is a large area with a couple of different buildings on it. There are a couple of conferences centres within the complex as well as an Intercontinental Hotel and also some fancy looking restaurants.
Walking past all of that you could get to Rinko Park which was at the end of the bay, and it made a great place to look out upon the rest of Yokohama from across the water:
It's strange that my stay here has been book-ended by gaining views from opposite perspectives over the water.
I stayed for a while just enjoying how peaceful it was, and although there were quite a few people around, everyone was pretty much doing the same thing. I could honestly have stayed there for hours with the sun shining down on me and with a lovely breeze blowing through the air.
I wanted to check to make sure that the Cosmo Clock definitely wasn't open, and if not at least I could take a few pictures from a bit closer up so I headed in that direction to discover that the gate was definitely locked.
I was disappointed that I wouldn't get to have a ride on it, but I guess after the other day in Taiwan I figured that for my dislike of heights, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing!
I walked along the bay towards the pier where I'd spent the first night and then came back to my hotel where I took a little rest before heading out for dinner.
I don't want to put a curse on myself, but so far I've found that getting dinner in Japan has been much easier than anywhere else in the latter part of my journey. I like going to new and different places, and if at all possible I'd like to eat 21 different things during my three weeks, but that's quite a task.
I think like in most Asian countries, people here eat quite late which is why a lot of the restaurants I go in to are pretty quiet, but in fairness that does make things a lot easier for me.
Just generally something I've noticed here is that you seem to see a lot of people walking, sitting or eating by themselves. Abroad I've always felt like I was the only one without someone else by their side, and it's not like everyone who I've seen is solo, but certainly each restaurant I've been to there are usually people sitting and eating alone.
Tonight I went into a similar style restaurant to the one I went into on the first night, except I didn't order my dinner through a computer. It was quite a nice meal of beef and rice and quite a sweet flavoured sauce, and it was a large enough potion to make sure that I stayed full for most of the evening.
Tomorrow I will be making the second step of my stay in Japan, one which I am very much looking forward to.
As for Yokohama, it really has been an enjoyable place to stay, I think it has joined a list of my favourite cities as well - a list that rapidly grows by the day. I hope this has been the beginning of a fantastic experience in Japan, and that will certainly be the case if everywhere I visit is just like Yokohama.
It's Oh So Quiet (Shhhhh)
Bjork (1995)
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