This post was written in 2005. Some information may be out of date.
This is Yokohama Chinatown. I’ve been to Kobe’s Chinatown once before, but Yokohama
Chinatown is a good two or three times bigger than Kobe’s. It was the weekend, so it was packed with people.
Chinese restaurants and Chinese-related shops are all gathered here, but if you ask whether they sell tasty
food… I don’t think so. The Chinese steamed buns (butaman or nikuman)
cost a good 1.5 times more than elsewhere, and yet I couldn’t say they were any better than the ones
sold at convenience stores. They also sell amaguri (roasted sweet chestnuts), but one bag is about 10,000 won.
Back home it’d be about 2,000 won, right? That’s way too big a price gap… And it’s not like
they’d be especially tasty either… (they’re probably made in China anyway…)
The gate of Chinatown.
A poster for paintings on display at a gallery near the entrance. They say they’re by an Italian artist called Pino,
and each painting cost around 10 million won. Well… he really could paint, I’ll give him that…
In Chinatown… I really should have had a Chinese set course… -_-;; but every course was for two people minimum,
so… (one restaurant did have a course for one, but somehow I wasn’t feeling it…) I wandered around and walked into a ramen shop (-_-)
that looked cheap and good, and ordered ramen. The photo is the 500-yen shark fin ramen…
Mm… it was good. ^_^ But maybe I should call it Chinese noodles rather than ramen… The noodles were closer
to the Chinese-restaurant noodles I used to eat all the time in Korea than to Japanese-style ramen.
Boiled dumplings (sui gyoza). The taste was so-so… The ramen was cheap, but the gyoza and desserts were pricey to make up for it. Boo.
The desserts in Chinatown are mostly tapioca and annin tofu (almond jelly)… they taste
pretty much the same as anywhere else, but they cost a bit more… -_-;;