When we got back to the ship the air conditioning was working again and the engineer we spoke with said the ship had already cooled down by 3o Celsius. The view of downtown Yokohama at night from our balcony was delightful and we could still hear the chanting from the stadium.
That evening Holland America brought on a folk ensemble from Okinawa with drumming, singing and dancing, plus a very acrobatic lion dance. Okinawa only became Japanese in the 1870s, before that it was part of the independent Ryukyuan Kingdom which was a tributary state to both China and Japan. The lion dance is typically Chinese but is thought to have originated in India. It also made its way to Japan.
The group said that they did traditional Okinawan songs but also borrowed from other cultures, they said they even borrowed from Michael Jackson, but we did not see that. But the final song, a tribute to Okinawan beer was the tune was the Irish Pub song and I found myself singing along, but not the words the dancers were singing. Instead of “Okinawa Beer” I was singing “You’ll find an Irish Pub.”
We spent two days in Yokohama, sailing away at 9PM on Saturday night. That night, after getting back from a day in Tokyo we sat on our balcony and first watched the Ferris Wheel, led light display with changing patterns and colors. I can’t compress it enough to put on this blog (slow learning curve). But I have a video of it on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/rich.mcclear/videos/1573816843239615
Then at 8 PM we saw Yokohama’s “Sparkling Twilight” fireworks display. This started as a weekly summer celebration but will continue throughout the year.
As we sailed out at 9 PM folks lined the pier and waved goodbye with their cell phone flashlights and called out bye-bye as we sailed off into gale force winds once we got outside of Tokyo Bay.
One thought on “Yokohama Comes to Us.”