Walking in Yokohama Chinatown for 30 minutes! Biggest Chinatown in Japan

Kon’nichiwa!

I confess I didn’t have a particular interest in Chinatown so you can keep that in mind.

In fact, as I was looking for things to do in Yokohama, I didn’t understand why Chinatown is often listed as one of the top things to do.

You are in Japan after all, not China, so why is a Chinese experience one of the must-do things in a major Japanese city?

 

If it’s your first time in East Asia, or you are an East Asia enthusiast in general, then you’ll find the Yokohama Chinatown fun and interesting.

Yokohama has the biggest Chinatown in Japan. Being less than an hour from Tokyo, it’s the easiest Chinatown to visit in Japan during a stay in Tokyo.

For example, the centrally located neighborhood of Shinjuku to Yokohama Chinatown is around 1 hour by train.

There are 2 more proper Chinatowns in Japan, and then are in Kobe (near Osaka), and Nagasaki (on the southern island of Kyushu).

 

If you’re in the area, you might as well walk through Chinatown because, well, why not.

It’s conveniently located, so chances are you might end up in the area anyway. It’s a 5 to 10 minute walk from the waterfront at Yamashita Park, as well as from Yokohama Stadium which is one place that you can see a Japanese baseball game in the Tokyo area.

 

If you want a fun mission, then you can go on a scavenger hunt to look for all the Chinatown gates! It’s often cited that there are 10 gates in total.

 

The Yokohama tourism people say that the Yokohama Chinatown is known as the “world’s best Chinese food spot.” (They must mean outside of China?)

So if you like Chinese food, or you’re a foodie in general, then I would think that it’s an actual must-visit for you and worth prioritizing. The most popular specialties you’ll find in Yokohama Chinatown are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, and Sichuan dishes, along with Taiwanese cuisine and dim sum.

 

📌 Save this post for later! Save on Pinterest! 👈📌

There are partner websites included in this post.

 

 

JAPAN TRAVEL > TOKYO MAP | YOKOHAMA MAP >
> YOKOHAMA > RAMEN | GARDENS | MATCHA | BASEBALL

 

 

 

I ended up walking through Chinatown out of curiosity. Since I wasn’t doing anything in particular, I figured it would be a quick visit of 5 to 10 minutes or something. So I was actually surprised when I looked at the timestamp on my pictures and saw that I ended up walking around Chinatown for 30 minutes.

So on this particular day that I went to Chinatown, I had gone to Sankeien Garden to start my day, so I arrived to Chinatown by bus.

 

👆 You can make Chinatown part of a Yokohama day trip from Tokyo. This is a map that shows train directions from Shinjuku to Yokohama Chinatown (map).

 

👆 Use google maps public transit directions to figure out how you want to get to Yokohama Chinatown (directions). Along with how much time it will take, it tells you how much it will cost to get there.

 

The train station for Chinatown is Motomachi-Chukagai, and this is also a convenient station for Yamashita Park. There are coin lockers at Motomachi-Chukagai Station for luggage storage.

I’ve left my luggage at Motomachi-Chukagai Station before boarding a cruise ship on embarkation day, so I could do some more Yokohama things. There was a free cruise shuttle from Yamashita Park to Daikoku Pier.

 

 

I started off on the side of the Zenrinmon Gate aka Goodwill Gate (map).

 

👆 Here I am walking towards the heart of Chinatown and Zenrinmon Gate.

 

I walked past the Chinese grocery store called Odecho but didn’t go inside. As I saw later, this has really good reviews (4.9!) so you might want to stop in and take a look!

 

👆 Here I am walking past the Chinese grocery store called Odecho.

 

Many of the restaurants have pictures outside so you can take a look at the menu, but I do recommend that after you see a picture of something you like that you do a quick check on google maps to see what the reviews are like!

 

👆 This restaurant seemed to have average reviews overall.

 

In looking at the ratings of the Chinatown restaurants, if you see something with 4.3 or 4.4 on google maps, that seems like it’s pretty good. There aren’t many restaurants higher than that.

Some of the highly rated restaurants in Yokohama Chinatown are Syoufukurou that is a Chinese food buffet restaurant with very good reviews (4.7), Seisen Shoman (4.5) that serves Sichuan food, and Kainan no le (4.5) that serves Singaporean food.

 

The gate I went through on Kanteibyo Street (map) to get to the famous temple of Chinatown.

 

👆 This is the gate I walked by near one of the iconic Chinese temples in Chinatown on Kanteibyo Street.

 

One of the iconic temples in Yokohama Chinatown is the Chinese-style temple called Kuan Ti Miao Temple (map). It’s a quick visit, but you’ll want to make your way to see the design details of this temple.

I think the one of the most interesting things to see was temples with the Chinese-style architecture and design.

The other iconic temple in Chinatown (that I missed) is the Mazu Miao Temple (map).

 

👆 This is the view as I approached the Kuan Ti Miao temple in Yokohama Chinatown walking along Kanteibyo Street.

 

👆 Walking through the gate of the Kuan Ti Miao temple.

 

👆 Notice the Chinese guardian lion statue and dragon.

 

👆 More Chinese guardian lion statues.

 

👆 You can walk inside the temple and see so much gold.

 

👆 More dragons.

 

👆 There are vibrant colors at the Chinese temple.

 

After looking around the temple, I continued walking. Next what really caught my eye was… pandas!

Since pandas are associated with China, you can find panda snacks in Chinatown!

You can get a cute panda-shaped bun at Rouishin.

 

👆 This is a panda snack shop in Chinatown.

 

👆 You can get a panda-shaped bun filled with custard for 410 yen (US$3).

 

Next I walked through the location-specific streets.

 

👆 There’s a dedicated Hong Kong Road in Yokohama Chinatown. That’s literally the name of the street you can look for on google maps (map).

 

👆 There’s a little alley in Yokohama Chinatown dedicated to Taiwan, called Tainan Alley (map).

 

Along Ichiba Dori street is where I saw the classic red lanterns (map).

 

👆 The classic red lanterns in Yokohama Chinatown on Ishiba Dori street. You might want to come see this at night too.

 

👆 A Chinatown gate on the red lantren street.

 

I left Chinatown on the side of the Chinatown East gate. From here, it’s less than 5 minutes walking to Yamashita Park and the waterfront. (map)

 

 

JAPAN TRAVEL > TOKYO MAP | YOKOHAMA MAP >
> YOKOHAMA > RAMEN | GARDENS | MATCHA | BASEBALL