Kanto, Japan · City
A port city with Japan's largest Chinatown and a modern skyline overlooking the bay.
Train — 30 minutes from Tokyo by train, no car needed
🤖 Technology / Futurism🛌 Pure relaxation
A futuristic waterfront skyline, including an iconic Ferris wheel.
The largest Chinatown in Asia, with hundreds of restaurants and food stalls.
Foreign Office Architects' cruise terminal is one of the key works of 2000s world architecture: a building with no stairs, all ramps and folded timber. The roof is a free public park and the best view of the bay at sunset.
Three dishes now found in every Japanese cafe were invented in this 1927 hotel's coffee shop: napolitan spaghetti, doria and pudding a la mode. Eating them where they were invented is the best food-history lesson Yokohama offers.
Ninety free minutes watching the best-selling station bento in Japan being made, with a tasting of shumai straight off the line. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday only; bookings open three months ahead at midnight and go fast.
Thermal water trucked in daily by tanker from Yugawara and Atami, in a nine-storey building beside the bay. Admission includes yukata and towels, and the rooftop foot bath looks straight at the Ferris wheel. This is not an onsen with its own spring: for that you go to Hakone.
Yokohama is probably the city where the most modern Japanese dishes were invented: gyunabe, iekei ramen, sanma-men, napolitan, doria. A walking route through the original restaurants explains the city better than any museum.
The stadium sits literally inside Yokohama Park, ten minutes on foot from Chinatown, and the BayStars crowd is among the loudest and most choreographed in Japan. Tickets for good dates sell out weeks ahead.
Reopened in March 2024 after three years closed, with the Grand Gallery turned into free open space and a strong collection in photography and surrealism. It closes on Thursdays, a detail that catches almost everyone out.
The annex building opens to the public from nine to two on auction days, with a dozen sushi, ramen and sashimi canteens serving market workers. Come by public transport, and filming video requires city permission.
The series is explicitly set in Yokohama and the city runs recurring official stamp rallies through Cosmo World, the Air Cabin, the Marine Tower and Kannai. Outside campaign periods the location route still works on your own.
An interactive museum where you can design your own instant ramen; general admission doesn't require a reservation, but the cup-design workshop hands out a limited number of same-day numbered tickets.
Free museum at JICA Yokohama about the million Japanese who emigrated to Brazil, Peru, Hawaii and Manchuria from this very port, and about their descendants who came back to Japan to work. Closed Mondays, and almost nobody knows it despite sitting in the middle of Minato Mirai.
Kanteibyo, dedicated to Guan Yu, has stood since 1871 and remains the real religious heart of Yokohama's Chinese community; Masobyo, from 2006, honours the goddess of the sea. These are working temples: do not photograph the interiors or anyone praying.
Ninety-minute tour of the Namamugi plant in Tsurumi, ending with a tasting of freshly poured Ichiban Shibori. Over-20s only and online booking required; the price rose to 1,000 yen on 1 October 2026.
Until 2005 this was an illegal prostitution district of tiny cubicles under the Keikyu viaduct; today the same units are studios and galleries of the Koganecho Bazaar. It is the most studied case of urban regeneration through art in Japan, and the eviction fell above all on vulnerable migrant women: it should not be told purely as a success story.
Some 18,000 shells in 45 minutes over the bay, with the finale synchronised to music. The whole site is ticketed, from 6,000 to 18,000 yen depending on the zone, and the organisers explicitly ask people not to watch from the street or from boats.
Dense warren of retro taverns near Sakuragicho, the most genuine and least touristy nightlife district in Yokohama. Note: Chigusa, the oldest jazz cafe in Japan, dating from 1933 and an emblem of the neighbourhood, is closed for works to turn it into a museum, with no end date. Its successor listening room has been in Kannai since February 2025.
On 1 and 2 June the city marks its port anniversary with stages, open ships and the Beam Spectacular in Harbour, which combines fireworks, light and music over the water. 2 June is a school holiday in Yokohama.
Former early-20th-century port warehouses converted into shops, restaurants, and an event space by the sea.
A traditional garden featuring historic buildings relocated from across Japan.
Near-24-hour urban spa attached to Yokohama Station, with sauna, carbonated bath and views over the tracks. Standard course 2,600 yen; no tattoos and no under-12s.
Observatory on the 69th floor of Yokohama's tallest building, with 360-degree views over Minato Mirai and, on clear days, Mount Fuji. 1,000 yen for adults, floor 69 at 273 metres. The lift is the fastest in Japan, about 40 seconds, but it stopped being the fastest in the world in 2016.
One of the two great Soto Zen monasteries in Japan, with expansive gardens and wooden buildings in the Tsurumi district.
A waterfront promenade with harbour views, considered Japan's oldest seaside park.
Nakadori street concentrates Okinawan restaurants, Brazilian bakeries and Peruvian shops founded by descendants of emigrants who returned to Japan. Eating soki soba and pao de queijo on the same block explains a century of Japanese migration. Come to eat, yes; come to photograph people as exotica, no.
Hilltop neighbourhood where foreigners settled after the port opened in 1859, with preserved Victorian mansions, a foreign cemetery and gardens overlooking the bay. Context worth keeping: these Western houses are the pleasant face of a regime of extraterritoriality imposed by the unequal treaties, which Japan took decades to reverse. Telling only the picturesque side distorts the history.
The character most loved by Japanese children under six has his indoor park here, with a ground floor of shops and restaurants that is free to enter. Tickets are bought for a set date and time, and outside that age range it makes little sense.
The treaty that opened Japan was signed in this courtyard in 1854, and the camphor tree in the middle is the same one that witnessed the scene. The museum tells the opening of the port from the Japanese side, not just Perry's.
A complex combining an aquarium, amusement park, and waterfront area on an artificial island in Yokohama Bay, hugely popular with families.
Yokohama is the birthplace of Japanese jazz, which arrived through the port and the American bases. The legendary Chigusa in Noge, from 1933, is under renovation until further notice, but its successor listening room in Kannai and the historic clubs keep the trail alive.
In October the city fills with jazz across ticketed halls and free street stages through Kannai, Bashamichi and the port. Tickets are sold per venue and specific date, with no general pass: pick one hall and build the walk around it.
One of the two head temples of Soto Zen alongside Eihei-ji, not the only one, with hundreds of monks in training and grounds on a scale no temple in Kamakura can match. Monthly zazen sessions are open to the public with advance booking.
One of the largest and best designed zoos in Japan, organised by biome, with okapi, Indian elephants and a long walk through woodland. It is in Asahi-ku, a fair way from the centre, so it takes a long half day.
Several days of celebration in late January or February with lion and dragon parades and thousands of lanterns in the largest Chinatown in Asia. The date shifts each year with the lunar calendar: in 2026 it began on 17 February, the 40th edition, and in 2027 it falls between mid-February and early March. Any fixed date is wrong.
From late November to Christmas the Akarenga courtyard hosts the oldest German-style Christmas market in Japan, with mulled wine and a giant fir tree. Admission is charged at peak hours and weekend queues are considerable.
A bayside amusement park featuring one of Japan's most iconic Ferris wheels.
Japan's first commercial beer was brewed here, and today the area concentrates brewpubs, taprooms and local breweries. It is an alternative to the izakaya alleys with less smoke and more room to sit.
The stone dry dock of 1896, a national cultural property, is built into the base of the Landmark Tower and works as a sunken plaza and concert venue. It is the reminder that Minato Mirai was a Mitsubishi shipyard until 1983.
The largest stadium in Japan, host of the 2002 World Cup final and the 2019 Rugby World Cup, home to Yokohama F.Marinos and the Canon Eagles. It is in Shin-Yokohama, with excellent transport links.
A large planetarium and five floors of hands-on experiments about space and physics, in Isogo. It is the best rainy-day plan with children in Yokohama and very few foreigners go.
Almost 1,900 graves of British, Australian, Indian, Canadian and New Zealand prisoners of war who died in captivity in Japan, among eucalyptus trees planted as a diplomatic gesture. It is a place of active mourning, visited by families: silence, no drones, no group photos.
Entry is free and you pay only for what you ride, including the Vanish roller coaster that plunges under water for 900 yen. It closes on Thursdays and takes cash only, two things that ruin plans regularly.
Reopened after renovation in July 2025, with a helicopter simulator, the Shinkai 6500 submersible and full-size H-II rocket engines. It closes early, at three on weekdays, so it has to be slotted in early.
The shopping street that served foreign residents from the 19th century and where the hamatora look was born in the 1970s, with historic houses making bags and made-to-measure shoes. It is the opposite of a shopping mall: family businesses more than a century old.
Boats leaving from Osanbashi and Yamashita loop around the Bay Bridge with Minato Mirai lit up behind. There are cruise-only and dinner-on-board options, and weekends are worth booking ahead.
Four-masted sailing ship from 1930 moored beside a museum covering the opening of Yokohama's port to foreign trade in 1859, the founding event of the modern city.
Free exhibition in the lobby of Nissan's world headquarters, next to Yokohama Station, with prototypes, racing cars and historic models. You simply walk in, and it is one of the most underrated free visits in the city.
Scheduled boat linking Yokohama Station with Minato Mirai, the red brick warehouses and Yamashita Park in about 15 minutes. It is genuine public transport and it spares you the dullest walk in the city.
Two open meadows facing the water where Yokohama residents lie down with a konbini bento and watch the cargo ships go by. Zou-no-hana also marks the exact site of the original 1859 pier.
An underground theme park set in 1958 Japan, featuring replica ramen stalls representing regional styles from across the country.
Thirteenth-century Pure Land garden with a red bridge and a pond shaped like the character for water, next to the medieval library of the Hojo clan. It sits in Kanazawa-ku, well off the usual circuit, and has a calm that no longer exists in Kamakura.
Museum devoted to silk, the historic engine of Yokohama's port, with looms, kimono and the history of the textile trade that opened Japan to the West.
Yokohama historically concentrated the hand printing of Japanese silk and still produces high-end scarves using dozens of screens per design. Beyond buying, there are workshops that teach how to choose and knot a scarf.
Tsurumi has the largest Okinawan community in Kanto, and its Uchina-sai and the Michijunee parade in August fill Nakadori street with eisa drums, awamori and sanshin. It is a neighbourhood festival, not a tourist production.
Some 3,000 Japanese tin toys from 1890 to 1960 assembled by collector Teruhisa Kitahara, in a small house in Yamate. It is the missing link between postwar craft workshops and the Japan that later exported robots and games consoles.
Japan's first permanent urban ropeway: 629 metres between Sakuragicho and Unga Park, in air-conditioned cabins with views of the red brick warehouses and the Ferris wheel. 1,000 yen one way, and it is worth doing at night.
Close to 2,200 rose varieties in a compact garden behind Hiranumabashi Station, peaking in May and again in October. It charges admission and is modest in size, but the colour-based design is well above the Japanese average.
The 2026 edition falls on Sunday 25 October, with a full marathon, pairs relays and short 7-kilometre races through Minato Mirai. You can run it or just watch, but the centre is closed to traffic that day and everything else has to be replanned.
Municipal zoo with free entry on a hill above Noge, with red pandas, giraffes and a petting area with small animals. It is where local families take their children, not a theme park.
Three waterfront complexes with independent brands, ice cream shops, a cruise terminal and a continuous promenade linking them. They are walkable end to end and work well as an afternoon with no fixed goal.
Official branch of the Grand Shrine of Ise, founded in 1870 on a hill in Nishi-ku, with the same shinmei-zukuri architecture and almost no tourists. It is the city's tutelary shrine.
A shopping street nearly two kilometres long where Chinese, Thai, Filipino, Peruvian and Korean bars overlap with pachinko parlours and second-hand shops. It is ugly, loud and completely real; use judgement and keep the camera down.
A preserved satoyama inside the limits of Japan's second city, with rice paddies worked by volunteers, frogs and dragonflies. In June and October you can watch rice being worked 20 minutes by train from the skyscrapers.
A huge sloping meadow laid over the course of Japan's first Western-style racecourse, from 1866, with the ruined 1930 grandstand looming among the trees. In March it is one of the best hanami spots in the city and there are almost no foreigners.
The stretch between Kanagawa and Hodogaya still has temples that served as improvised foreign consulates in 1859, stone markers and the original slopes. This is the Yokohama that predates Yokohama, running through completely ordinary neighbourhoods.
Yokohama's only sandy beach, artificial but with real clam digging in spring at low tide. It is a local family outing rather than a tourist one, and combines well with Shomyo-ji.
Japan's first games of baseball, rugby, cricket, tennis and football were played in the Yokohama foreign settlement, and monuments remain beside the athletic club founded in 1868. A short walk that reorders the country's sporting history.
More than 10,000 dolls from around a hundred countries, including the friendship dolls exchanged with the United States in 1927 that nearly disappeared during the war. It is an oblique reading of the port's diplomatic history.
The first Catholic church in Japan after the ban ended was built here, as was the first Japanese Protestant church, the Kaigan Church of 1872. This is the point where Christianity returned legally to Japan after two and a half centuries underground.
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