The port of Yokohama is actually much older than 150 years, but this past summer the city celebrated its 150th year as an international port. Those of you who have followed our story from the beginning may remember us mentioning U.S. Naval Officer Matthew Perry (brother to more popular Oliver Hazard Perry) making arrangements with Japan to open up to U.S. trade. The trade began in the port of Yokohama and marked the beginning of Japan opening to the world and it's "modernization".
This summer in Yokohama there were several carnival style attractions celebrating, or not, the opening. We made a day of the celebration with our friends Etsuko san, Nakano san and her husband. There were several sponsors, so the attractions ended up being quite unique and diverse. Nissan had a display of its cars of the future featuring PIVO a pod looking thing that swiveled around making the vehicle have no distinct front or back. It ran fully electrical and in the video they showed about it there will eventually be little charging strips embedded in the road so that while driving over them, they give you little boosts of recharge. It seemed very cool, but a little to good to be true (at least in the near future). They also had a replica of the Nissan "TAMA" a car from the '50s that was fully electric and could go about 60 mph! What have auto manufacturers been doing this whole time?
There were lots of other "green-themed" exhibits; one with a cool video montage on a hyper-fancy HD screen sponsored by the NFL, of all organizations, showing clips of different country sides, bodies of water and rural peoples throughout the world. We weren't sure if it was some sort of guilt trip for our modern 21st century ways or a plug for NFL Sunday ticket on cable. The irony of the whole thing was that after all the "green" buzz that was being thrown at us we emerged onto a courtyard faced with a gigantic mechanical spider call LA MACHINE! It was designed and built by some French engineering company with no purpose whatsoever. It required about eight, what they called "pilots" to operate it. As its spindly exo-skeletal legs extended and retracted for about twenty minutes, LA MACHINE's engine billowed out clouds of black exhaust while spaying the audience with mists of water from either it's mouth or rear. Totally weird.
Spending the day with our friends was, as always, wonderful. Nakano san and Etsuko san seem to know the best places to take us. We had a fantastic lunch looking over the harbor where we had egg plant ice cream. Dinner was great too, The restaurant had an outdoor patio and for a more romantic setting for two you could take your meal on a bed; we did see some double dates happening.
