2007/10/22

Be my Yokohama

I return to the obscure pop culture references for a title, and catch up on the last bits of my trip to Japan. Pretend the date is 3 September.

I didn’t really see any of Yokohama outside of the short distance from my hotel to the convention center, but there are a few pictures I took in that area which seem worth sharing.
On the way to the convention center, I walked past this large sculpture located between two buildings.
This was not one of those buildings, though it was close by. If I remember correctly, it’s called the Landmark Tower, and it’s, well, a landmark. For a thousand yen you can take the elevator up to the top, where there’s an observation deck, a restaurant, and live jazz, but I didn’t.
The city is proud of its maritime heritage. This is the Nippon Maru Yokohama.
I saw a big group of school children doing exercises next to it one morning. It's probably too small to see, but they're in this picture. I think it was some kind of school outing where they went onto the ship and learned about being sailors.

The return to Beijing was relatively uneventful. I took the Yokohama local train one stop from my hotel, and got on the fast train at Yokohama Station to go directly to Narita Airport, where I discovered a massive line waiting to check in with Air China. I managed to make it to my gate with a few minutes to spare, and in a couple hours I was back in China. I am somewhat intrigued that my booking of a flight from Shanghai to Tokyo plus a flight from Tokyo to Beijing was called a “round trip” ticket.

4 comments:

  1. The ship is beautiful, at least from the pics it's in such good condition it looks like a reproduction instead of the original. As always thanks for sharing.

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  2. "Landmark" is a trademark of a series of commercial property owned by a property investment group based in Hongkong ("HongKong Land"). Actually there is another Landmark Tower located in Nanjing Road in Shanghai, near the Marriot there. Its Chinese name is "zhi4 di4 guang3 chang3".

    btw, this is Hui. Probably all the anonymous comments were by me. :)

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  3. I remember seeing the Landmark name in Shanghai, and actually it seemed to me that the Marriott IS the Landmark - I could swear I saw a sign that read MARRIOTT LANDMARK TOWER, but maybe the sign was just saying that both the Marriott and the Landmark Tower were in the same direction.

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  4. It's very possible that Marriot has leased a number of floors from the Landmark in Shanghai, which simply owns the building. I haven't been to Shanghai for quite a few years. Things change fast over there. Well, we all know that from our day-to-day work. :)

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