Yokohama

When I mention Yokohama, naturally you'll recall this was the location for the final showdown between Godzilla and Mothra, and was the setting for the video games Shenmue, Enchanted Arms and Shadow Hearts 2. What you mightn't realize is that with 3.6 millions shoppers ... er, inhabitants, it's the second largest city in Japan.

Visited on the weekend. One major draw was the expansive, colorful and olfactorily pleasing Chinatown, one of the largest Chinese communities outside of China. Delicious food, crowded streets, and outrageous kitsch (check out the boob keyrings).

Interestingly, it was easy to differentiate the Chinese and Japanese. Completely different mannerisms and energy. The Chinese seem a little more brusque to me; the Japanese seem much more genteel.

Next came the whole port area of Yokohama, which includes a very futuristic-looking building and a building that looks like to me a like a giant taco shell.

This is the center of Yokohama and home to the largest shopping mall I’ve ever seen. Eight endless floors crammed with shopping overkill. Walk out of the mall and you enter a second mall nearly as large. The Japanese are clearly the most consumer-based culture on the face of the planet. I’ll hunt for statistics to back the accusation, but they’ve got to shop even more than Americans.

Being a port town, there were some groovy gentrified areas around the water. One of these was an old red-brick warehouse that has been turned into … you guessed it … a shopping mall.