9 November 2017
Resurgence
Eating Mapo Tofu in Yokohama Chinatown
Its not game over yet. I seem to be going through a resurgence. Maybe it will be brief, maybe it will be lasting, time will tell....time will tell.
I have been to Yokohama before, but only during the day. I thought then that the Chinatown was a bit boring. A few things have changed since then because now its awesome.
First, I think in the years since I have been here, the Japanese appreciation of taking money from Chinese tourists has increased massively. So they have a lot more food options now for actual Chinese people, not just Japanese people wanting to eat Ramen in a place decorated with Chinese gates and lanterns.
Second, I think the place comes alive at night.
My hotel is on the corner of the main Chinatown street, so to Chinatown I went.
I selected Mapo Tofu, and it was very much like the style found in Chengdu, a lot of ma as well as la, and I think this combination might be the main cause of my resurgence.
What I need is for a Chinese chef to follow me around with some Sichuan peppers.
Yokohama is also a very big place, the apricot shading on the map is very very large. I saw only a small part of it, and never actually got to central Yokohama on my walk this evening. I did however injure myself looking at the map.
By some calculations, Yokohama is actually the second biggest city in Japan, with 3.7 million residents, but this is very confusing because its joined on to Tokyo and forms part of the greater Tokyo metro area.
Thats enough geography.
The entrance to Chinatown. I was excited to be back amongst my own people.
A lantern dragon.
Hong Kong street, complete with pay to use toilets. Very entrepreneurial.
With so many world champions of dim sum and cooking you would assume this place would have at least one customer, but they do not.
One of their so called champions is also a woman, which is impossible. All great chefs are men.
I felt like shark fin soup, but it was too expensive. That however is the biggest shark fin I ever saw.
Japan has shark fin soup, ivory, whale meat, live fish eating. Its all good.
There were so many reasturants, I decided to make my choice from one of the places on this alleyway, or else I would never choose.
The first place I went into, I knew what I wanted, saw it on the big sign out the front, house specialty, Taiwan beef noodle.
So I sit down, and out comes the honey chicken menu. I ask for the real chinese menu, in Chinese, and get answered in Japanese. So I left.
Everything on the English menu was also 3x the price.
Next place was dark, old looking, and I saw the chef smoking in the alleyway, so you know hes the real deal. No honey chicken menu here, menu was written in Chinese.
The mapo tofu as I wrote above was fantastic. $7 including soup, rice, dumplings, pickles and dessert which I turned down.
I am amused that the taxis seem to say 'the contribution to society' which is a term I attribute to reformed criminals.
THIS IS THE POLE I WALKED INTO.
I was reading google maps, and suffered a catastrophic groin injury. I tried to laugh and walk it off. I saw at least one guy laughing at me. It was pretty funny.
This outdoor mall went for many miles. I did not get to the end of it.
And just because I didnt take enough photos earlier, here is a random street in Yokohama. Quite shiny and new looking.