With the Yokohama Oktoberfest beer garden now well and truly behind us, onward we marched towards the giant, neon lit ferris wheel in the distance, stopping only because we were distracted by the lights coming from the rather prominent Yokohama World Porters building in front of us.
As it turns out, the Japanese love for themed things truly knows no bounds, because the first floor of World Porters is of course… Hawaiian themed.
No joke. Surfing videos, tiki statues, palm leaves – well you get the picture. Still, it was interesting to walk about, and in the process we did manage to lay our hands on a weird ice cream soda float thing with a massive block of ice in the middle.
Which was nice and refreshing if I remember correctly.
Back on our mission to make it to the brightly lit ferris wheel in the distance (which turns out is the world famous Cosmo Clock 21 ferris wheel, once the tallest ferris wheel in the world, and also star of the 1992 Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth movie!), we eventually stumbled across the Cosmo World amusement park.
Being neither kids nor romantic, we didn’t stray in the park for too long, but certainly took long enough to admire all the cool kids attractions that certainly would have been a fun outing back in the day when we were still running around at knee height!
Continuing our late evening stroll, we came upon the Dockyard Garden at the foot of the Landmark Plaza, just in time to be treated to the the jaw-droppingly amazing and technically stunning Yokohama Odyssey 3D projection mapping show – which kept us (and by now our aching feet) completely enthralled from start to finish.
(I’ve blogged about this artistic technical wizardry before. An absolute must to take in if you are ever in the area!)
And because Yokohama didn’t seem to want to stop showing us interesting things, next in our line of vision was the magnificent, permanently moored Nippon Maru sailing ship (built in 1930 and employed as a training ship for the cadets of the Japanese merchant marine), currently used as a museum ship that is open to the public.
However, we were now near our ultimate target for the evening (even if we were struggling a bit to find the official entrance to the building).
Our mission to visit as many observation decks as possible was about to have one new member added – Sky Garden, the observation deck of Yokohama’s famous Landmark Tower!
(Image swiped from Google, because well, we were there in the evening and it was dark.)
From Wikipedia: “The Yokohama Landmark Tower (completed 1993) is the second tallest building and 4th tallest structure in Japan, standing 296.3 m high. When built, it was the tallest building in Japan until it was surpassed by Abeno Harukas’ in 2012. Also, at opening, it had the highest observation deck in Japan.
The building contains a five-star hotel which occupies floors 49-70, with 603 rooms in total. The lower 48 floors contain shops, restaurants, clinics, and offices. The building contains two tuned mass dampers on the (hidden) 71st floor on opposite corners of the building.
On the 69th floor there is an observatory, Sky Garden, from which one can see a 360-degree view of the city, and on clear days Mount Fuji.
The tower contains what were at their inauguration the world’s second fastest elevators, which reach speeds of 12.5 m/s (45.0 km/h). This speed allows the elevator to reach the 69th floor in approximately 40 seconds. The elevators’ speed record was finally surpassed by elevators of Taipei 101 (60.6 km/h) in 2004.”
The night time views of Yokohama from above didn’t disappoint, and were in a word, breathtaking.
Ryan and I spent a fair amount of time just chilling and taking in the night time scenery – and of course discussing the phenomenal lift speed that got us to this height in the first place!
Eventually we made our way down from Sky Garden and ambled around a bit in the by now deserted shopping sections of Landmark Plaza, eschewing the more fancy stores for views of the more nostalgia awakening ones – like this brilliant Pokemon Center we stumbled across.
And that was that.
Tired, sore feet, and no desire to walk back to Yokohama (from my side anyway), Ryan relented and expertly guided us to the nearby JR Sakragicho train station for a quick train hop back to our Super Hotel Yokohama rooms.
Where needless to say, I slept rather well.
Related Links: World Porters | Cosmo Clock 21 | Cosmo World | Nippon Maru | Landmark Tower | Landmark Plaza