Last Sunday I headed out to Yokohama with my friend after a relaxing weekend. About a year ago, a researcher I met while at Columbia University who grew up in Yokohama took me to a Gyoza shop in Sakuragicho, Yokohama that he said has some of the best Gyoza in Japan. For reference, that is a little place called Sanyou, which is always busy, but did have great Gyoza. One of the reviews for that place said they didn’t like the place because they want you to order quickly, and he didn’t know what to get. They gave him a beer and told him to get out.
This time instead we went to Ban-Li
another ramen-gyouza shop nearby. We ordered some gyouza, both fried and steamed, and they were great. A while back I went to Namco Namjya Town’s Gyoza Battle Stadium, where there were lots of different types of Gyoza to try out. That was fun too, but I was glad that this place was a normal restaurant with just your normal choices. One of the annoying things about the Chinatown in Yokohama is that it has been created and marketed as a kind of “China Land” within Japan, and is almost more theme park than neighborhood. Everything there is really expensive, and more for show than anything else.
Ban-Li is not for show: it’s the kind of hole-in-the-wall Chinese place that you would find at New York’s Chinatown. Along with the gyoza, we got beer and mabu-tofu, which was also great. On the way out we went and checked on Sanyou, and it was packed. Lots of people waiting outside to get in. It is a place that I would like to try again sometime.
After dinner, we headed over to Landmark Tower, which has the tallest observation deck in Japan. They are very proud of their elevator, which is the fastest in Japan. It was very fast. I think it reached speeds of 470 km/h, but it was impressively smooth. I generally don’t like elevators and easily get motion sick on them, but this elevator was ok. (I really think they should replace the elevator in Disney’s the Tower of Terror with the one in Landmark Tower – I got totally sick on that one, but this one was fine.)
On the way we also checked out the Yokohama Ferris Wheel, which puts on a really nice show when it isn’t doing its impersonation of a giant clock.
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