Japan 2014: Yokohama Landmark Tower

While located in Yokohama we were staying in the Minato Mirai 21 complex which is a short walk from the Landmark Tower building.

The Landmark Tower opened in 1993 and towers over the rest of Yokohama at a height of 296 meters with the observation deck located on the top floor at 273 meters named the Sky Garden.

The observation deck is avbailble from the main building lobby or directly from the street. The dedicated entrance allows access to the ticket office. Prices are 1000¥ for access to the observation deck. Once your there you can stay as long as you wish. So you could potentially setup time-lapse cameras or night, sunrise or sunsets i dont think it would be a problem.

Access to the top floor is via two operated lifts which travel to the top floor in about 40 seconds.

The observation deck is a spacious area with large windows which were clean inside and out which should provide good photographic opportunities. There is also a well stocked souvenir shop and restaurant.

Obviously it provides excellent views over Yokohama to Tokyo and even Mt Fuji if the weather allows.

Japan 2014: Yokohama Minato Mirai 21

During our Japan trip we spent six nights at the Intercontenental Grand Yokohama located in the shopping and hotel complex located at Minato Mirai 21.

The complex includes several hotels, Queens Square mall, subway station, underground parking etc. It also blends with the Landmark Tower complex too.

The Queens Square is a large six level affair if you include the Minato Mirai subway station. It has countless shopping outlets, convenience stores and restaurants.

During our stay we had a hire car, parking for the hotel is shared with the public underground parking located next to the hotel. The hotel offers discounted parking for those residents using the car park at 1800¥ per day which at the time i write is about £10.60, which is good for parking at this size of hotel. The car park is very large there was never a shortage of places.

The mall could provide a lot of shopping opportunities if you like that kind of thing, for us we did not go for the shopping and only used the restaurants located within.

After a few nights out in Tokyo i was surprised to find the mall closed at 23:00 hours. Which meant most of the restaurants closed at 22:00, the odd bar opened until 23:00. There was little else in the local area, it all seemed to be concentrated in the mall which meant we often picked up a few cans of Kirin in the stores. These we drank back at the hotel while we blogged and facebooked our daily shinanigens.

Food outlets were numerous and their quality was good if you stick to the traditional Japanese food.

In our experience eating in the American chain restaurants was not an enjoyable experience and always seemed to disappoint. When in Japan you should be enjoying their home dishes not burgers and ribs american style!

Japan 2014: In Car Sat Nav

While in Japan we hired a Toyota 86 (aka GT86), although we managed to get a manual gearbox model it was not equipped with a English based navigation system. But we did manage to use it for over 1000km of travel in cities and out into the Gunma mountain roads and tolls.

Unless you know the Japanese characters entering an address, postcode etc is almost impossible but we quickly found a option that I had not seen before. This option is the ability to navigate by phone number.

Entering the number is just shown as a numeric keypad on our system which you simply enter in the entire number. This works for almost any landline number for places like hotels, filling stations etc and proved extremely accurate method of setting the destination.

Obviously with a Japanese sat nav comes spoken Japanese instructions but these are often only repeating what is clearly shown with the on screen maps and directional arrows.

Japan 2014: Shinkansen & Train Experiences Part 2

I am typing this on the flight back with lots of great memories. We spent a lot of time travelling on the Shinkansen and local train and subway networks in Japan so i thought i would detail some of our experiences.

As i already mentioned in my previous entry, the Japan Rail Pass from JR offers excellent value. If you expect to make use of the JR lines then you should check to see if its worth buying. If your going to take any Shinkansen over an hour or so in length the pass will likley be worth it just for the one trip.

Train stations in Japan are usually large affairs and often are part of bigger complexes of shopping malls, restaurants etc. They will likley be on multiple levels with many exits separated by long walks. They are usually busy as the rail network provides a big portion of Japans transport network but are generally well signed in English.

You will also get different lines operated by other rail operators and subways integrated into the same station, not all of which would be applicable to free travel with the rail pass. However local trains are cheap and frequent.

Ticket machines for local trains are located close to the barriers of the lines they are for. They allow you to select a ticket price and quantity on the screen. They accept 1000¥ notes and coins. A large map usually located above the machines will show the stations and the cost from where you are to that station. Unfortunately many of these signs show the price in numbers but the name of the station and line in Japanese characters so sometimes you will need to ask at the ticket desk where they will either issue a ticket for you or tell you the cost of the ticket you need to buy.

The tickets are a small postage sized card that is fed into the barrier, dont worry that the barrier looks like it is designed for different sized tickets, they are but accept both. Just feed it in and the gate will open popping out the ticket on the other side. Tickets are retained by the machine on your destination. Tickets issued at the manned windows are the larger size ones.

If your using the rail pass you dont use the automated barriers. There is usually a guard located at the side of the gates who you simply show your pass to. The JR Rail Passes are very common. The officer will normally just wave you through without needing to read the entire pass. Some barriers appear to be unmanned, but you will either find another manned barrier close by in the station or possibly a glazed passageway just next to the barriers where one or two officers are there to help with passes and other ticket issues.

Toilets in stations are generally located after the ticket gates, if you have a rail pass you can simply pass through the gates to use the toilet and then just walk back. With stations that have adjoining malls and restaurants just walking beyond the station area will often reveal public toilets.

Subways operate in exactly the same way as trains, they use the same mapping method, ticketing machines and barriers so if you can use the trains you can use the subway too.

Switching between lines and subways can sometimes be confusing especially if your switching between operators as they are often in different locations in the station. Sometimes they can even be next door meaning you might need to walk out of the station to find the subway for example.

Stations can get busy at peak times, Shinjuku for example is busy most of the time and gets crazy at peak times. If you dont like crowds then, well you probably came to the wrong country!  If you know where you want to go during the busy times that's fine but if you dont know what train to get, or not sure what ticket you need then its probably best to wait until the crowd dies down.

We found the rail and subways an excellent way to travel Japan. Though in summer you can end up being baked on the platform sometimes!