Yokohama - My hometown

My hometown is Yokohama.
It's quite famous by its name already but here's some more info...

Yokohama is located in Kanagawa prefecture, southern part of Kanto area.
The distance from Tokyo is about 40km.

Distance by car.

It's close to Tokyo.
It's about an hour by car, half an hour by train.

Here's about Yokohama in Wiki.

Yokohama (横浜市 Yokohama-shi), officially the City of Yokohama, is the second largest city in Japan by population afterTokyo, and most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area.

Yokohama's population of 3.7 million makes it Japan's largest incorporated city. Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century, and is today one of its major ports along with Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya,Hakata, Tokyo, and Chiba.

...I was an ordinary Japanese who doesn't know well about own hometown..
Well.., it's indeed a good chance now for me to understand my hometown. :D

Here's Yokohama's history in Wiki.

Yokohama was a small fishing village up to the end of the feudal Edo period, when Japan held a policy of national seclusion, having little contact with foreigners. A major turning point in Japanese history happened in 1853–54, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived just south of Yokohama with a fleet of American warships, demanding that Japan open several ports for commerce, and the Tokugawa shogunate agreed by signing the Treaty of Peace and Amity.

Yokohama was a fishing village!
It's like Singapore!
This was an important port in history that opened up to allow foreign ships for the first time after shutting down period (called "Sakoku").

Since then, this is the first place to import foreign things and introduced to other regions of Japan.
That's why it's sometimes called "International city".

Now I found some similarity in its history between Yokohama and Singapore somehow..
That's why some Japanese tourists say Singapore is similar to Yokohama and Kobe (also a port city).

Every time I go back to Japan, I go around Yokohama and definitely appears a lot in this blog.
So, this is Yokohama! :)

Yokohama Station

(2003)