Scot goes to Japan: Yokohama

We had monday and tuesday off because we had to be out of the youth center for those days. Don gave us a hotel budget and helped us make reservations for the couple nights we had to be gone. Wanting to make the most of it, we went to Yokohama. It is only a little bit from Tokyo on the JR. Pasmo worked there too, which was awesome. We decided to stay in a capsule hotel since they don't really exist outside of Japan. Don found one online called the SKYspa. It is located on the 14th and 15th floors of a department store building right next to the Yokohama station. If you want to see pictures, you have to go to the website, since you can't really take photos there.

http://www.skyspa.co.jp/

The hotel has a spa with about 5 different baths and a few different saunas. I spent a good portion of my time there, as the tubs and saunas looked out onto the cityscape below,

and were perfect for relaxing. The capsules themselves were surprisingly large, and had tv and radio inside. Unfortunately, the front screen that could be closed to block light and views did not block sound, and there were a few bears in there snoring it up at night. We went to the Yokohama terminal, and it was leagues better than last time in the typhoon. The building really is amazing, and despite the angular nature of the project, the craft is practically flawless.

We also saw some projects by a guy that we will get to meet later on the trip,

and a housing project that was enormous.

The housing project had some courtyard type spaces that looked like hangars from star wars. Although it didn't seem like a very nice place to live, it was cool to see just for the scale and intensity of it. As with the Kyoto International Conference Center, which we saw in Northern Kyoto, it is amazing to see a project like this actually built, which seems to have happened in Japan a lot more than anywhere else. We saw a gymnasium and a small university campus by Maki.