16 Places To Visit In Yokohama

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Day Trip (2)
Museum (2)
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1. Yokohama Chinatown

1 km from city center

Neighborhood

Around 600 restaurants and shops packed into roughly a quarter of a square kilometre, which makes this the largest Chinatown in Japan and the busiest single draw in the city. Ten painted gates mark the edges and the compass points. Most people eat standing: nikuman steamed buns, xiaolongbao and pan-fried dumplings handed straight over the counter, with the sit-down restaurants filling mainly at we (Read More)ekends.

Top Attraction

2 km from city center

Waterfront

The waterfront district built over the old shipyards from the 1980s, and the skyline on every photograph of Yokohama. Landmark Tower, the ferris wheel and the sail-shaped hotel line up neatly from the Kishamichi promenade, a converted railway bridge that is the place to stand at dusk. The Sky Garden observatory inside Landmark Tower is shut, so the view now comes from ground level or from Osanbash (Read More)i.

Top Attraction

1 km from city center

Landmark

Two customs warehouses from 1911 and 1913, damaged in the 1923 earthquake and reopened as shops and event halls in 2002 with the iron shutters and brickwork left on show. What brings people back is the plaza between the two buildings, which runs a rotating calendar all year: an outdoor skating rink in winter, an Oktoberfest in autumn, flower and food markets in between.

4 km from city center

Garden & Park

A garden assembled by a silk merchant who bought seventeen historic buildings from Kyoto, Kamakura and Gifu and had them dismantled and rebuilt here between 1906 and 1922. Ten are Important Cultural Properties, among them a three-storey pagoda dating to 1457. It reads as a garden and a compressed tour of Japanese architecture at the same time, which is why two slow hours beat a quick loop.

1 km from city center

Garden & Park

A seafront park laid out in the 1920s on rubble cleared after the Great Kanto Earthquake, so the ground underfoot is the old city. The 1930 liner Hikawa Maru is moored alongside and can be boarded: she carried passengers to Seattle before serving as a hospital ship in the war. The rose beds peak in May and again in October.

1 km from city center

Museum

500 yen gets you into the galleries, but the two things worth planning around cost extra and book out. My Cup Noodle Factory lets you design a cup and pick four toppings from a set list. The Chicken Ramen Factory, where you knead and flash-fry the noodles yourself, takes advance reservation and fills weeks ahead. Closed Tuesdays.

7. Cosmo World and Cosmo Clock 21

1 km from city center

Amusement & Theme Park

A free-entry amusement park where you pay per ride, built around a 112m ferris wheel whose face doubles as a working clock. Reports that the wheel has closed are wrong: it was running as of September 2026 at 1000 yen a turn. The thing to check is the park calendar rather than the weather, because Cosmo World shuts on most Thursdays.

1 km from city center

Observation Deck

A working cruise terminal with a public roof of Brazilian hardwood decking and lawn that rolls in curves instead of sitting flat. It is free, open late, and gives you the whole Minato Mirai skyline from the water side, which matters more now that Landmark Tower's observatory is shut. When a cruise ship berths alongside, the scene changes completely.

1 km from city center

Cable Car

The first urban commuter ropeway in Japan, covering 630m between Sakuragicho station and the Red Brick Warehouse in about five minutes. At 1000 yen one way or 1800 return it is steep for the distance, and walking the same line along Kishamichi takes 15 minutes. Ride it for the harbour at night, not to save time.

1 km from city center

Neighborhood

The hill where foreign residents settled after the port opened in 1859, and the counterweight to the reclaimed flats below. Seven Western houses built between the 1900s and 1930s are open free of charge, alongside a foreign general cemetery and Harbour View Park, whose roses are what brings locals up. Almost the whole walk costs nothing.

1 km from city center

Commercial Street

A 600m street of small independent shops that has been serving foreign residents since the 1860s and still supplies the Yamate hill above it. The fashion labels Fukuzo and Kitamura both started here. Practically it is the natural walk between Chinatown and the Bluff, so you pass along it whether or not you intend to shop.

1 km from city center

Museum

A four-masted barque launched in 1930 that trained Japanese merchant cadets for more than fifty years, now permanently moored in a stone dry dock completed in 1898. The dock is an Important Cultural Property in its own right and deserves as much attention as the ship. One ticket covers the vessel and the port museum under the plaza beside it.

2 km from city center

Art Gallery

Reopened in 2024 after three years shut for renovation, which is why guides written between 2021 and 2023 still list it as closed. The Kenzo Tange building puts a tall symmetrical stone hall between you and the galleries. The collection leans on photography and on artists tied to the port city, with Dali, Magritte and Cezanne among the Western holdings.

1 km from city center

Nightlife

Roughly 600 tiny bars, izakaya and standing counters in the lanes behind Sakuragicho, most of them seating fewer than ten people. This is where Yokohama drank before Minato Mirai existed, and it still fills from about six in the evening. Prices sit well below the waterfront and the turnover is quick: a drink and a plate, then move to the next door.

16 km from city center

Day Trip

Twenty-five minutes by JR and the easiest way to spend a day in old Japan without leaving Kanagawa. The bronze Great Buddha has sat in the open since a tsunami took its hall in 1498. Hasedera, the approach to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu and the bamboo grove at Hokokuji fill the rest, and the Enoden line connects them along the coast.

22 km from city center

Day Trip

A small island tied to the mainland by a bridge, usually paired with Kamakura on the same Enoden ticket. A shrine complex climbs the hill in three separate halls, sea caves cut into the far end, and the Sea Candle observation tower looks across Sagami Bay to Mount Fuji on clear winter days. Escalators up the hill cost extra if you would rather not walk.