Last year I was working with a guy called Yokoyama from Yokohama, which caused my poor little brain no end of confusion. Todays visit to the latter passed without seeing the former, which is probably a good thing lest he wonder where his support got to…
The town is an odd mix of industry, leisure and commercialism. First stop was the theme park, which appeared to have been designed by someone playing a scenario from Rollercoaster Tycoon, one where you get a piece of land large enough for a small house and have to squeeze in three rollercoasters, a log plume and a ferris wheel. The answer, of course, is to make your park vertical, the ferris wheel was on top of the four story building holding the amusement arcades. Tickets for the rides are available from vending machines all around the park, so you’re just queuing to get on, if you’re actually queuing at all. There was also a fortune telling labyrinth and a treasure hunt, which both looked quite entertaining but I was saving going in for a day when I was with other people – these things aren’t so much fun on your own. There were some interesting machines in the arcades too, a glow-in-the-dark Snoopy machine, an Armadillo race, a guitar machine and Typing of the Dead (with real keyboards and everything, just what you need when you’re in a haunted house, actually next time I see one I’ll see who makes the keyboards – they must be pretty heavy duty) alongside the usual shooters and racing games.
The next building south along the harbour edge is another shopping mall, much the same as many of the malls in Tokyo until you get to the fifth floor. Suddenly you find yourself emerging from a Japanese interpretation of a London tube station (its kind of a mix of a number of stations, not one style in particular) into a muddled up interpretation of a European street full of American cafes.
Heading further south I could see the pier of the passenger ferry terminal sticking out into the harbour like a huge mutant cruise ship made of concrete and grass. I would like to have taken a walk along it but it seemed to only be open to travellers. There was a work of art at its ‘base’ (what is the point where pier meets land called? It must have a name), two huge shiny cubes. Shiny as in that sparkly paper you get which reflects different colours in patterns, not as in a solid wall of mirror. Nice art, but utterly utterly pointless.
Further south I found a park with a rather excellent Brazillian band in – the park was reminiscent of some of those in Paris, except that it had the sea on one side. It also had a man who was pretending to juggle chainsaws who was more of an exhibitionist than a good juggler, and almost certainly didn’t need the encouragement of people actually paying attention.
Somehow the harbour had the feel of 1930s epic cruises to it, maybe all harbours do to some extent, but it almost seems everyone has forgotten to tell anyone here that we’ve got aeroplanes now.
Looping back around up through the town I discovered Chinatown. This is nothing like the street in London we refer to as Chinatown, I guess because of the proximity of China to here, it goes on for miles and theres shops selling anything and everything China-related. Food, obviously features heavily, but so do clothes and theres quite a lot of tacky plastic toys whose only connection is that they happened to be made there.
Navigating back toward the station theres a square with a glass sarcophogus on the ground just offset from the centre. Its getting dark by now so I peer into it to try to figure out what its all about, its just some old drain, odd then that it should be exposed so. Theres a little plaque by it which I’d not noticed when I wandered over to it, explaining that its a 100year old sewer and isn’t it so well engineered that it could still work if only we didn’t have this nice modern sewer system to replace it.
It was around this square that I saw my first ever motorcycle with a cruise light – I know they’re coming back in for cars these days back home, but on a motorbike?
Back at the concourse outside the station I remember the open air walkway leading off in the other direction that I was going to explore at some point, nows the time. It leads to Landmark Plaza, a shopping mall underneath the Landmark Tower, its a five story cathedral to consumerism. Todays gadget of the moment is a circular escalator. Well, strictly speaking it was actually two semicircular escalators, one up and one down. I had to go round a couple of times, much to the amusement of the locals.
Through the worshipping masses and on to the next mall, Queens Plaza which was mostly unremarkable except for the musical walkway (which plays electronic bells as you pass the posts along the middle, except it seemed intermittent, like it wasn’t paying attention if it was playing a note elsewhere) and on again to the Conference Centre and hotel at the seafront. Another conference centre like many others, made more amusing for me by having a Cafe Vague in it, sadly I’d already eaten so didn’t get a chance to try it – I will definitely be heading back there sometime.
After another quick go on the escalator I was off back along the moving walkway looking over the neon of the theme park – showing up more now that it was dark – and the impressive Panasonic CD adverts – an array of five 20ft Plasma screens showing animations of all the wonderful things you can store on their CDRs.
The station concourse was now alive with music, a Jazz band were competing with a pair of ravers (with mixing desk and everything), the metal band looked like they’d given up trying to compete and a sorry state they were in too. Lightweights.
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