Yokohama Private Tour: Explore with a Local Guide

A Yokohama day tour works because the city is nothing like Tokyo, though it starts half an hour away. Japan opened to foreign trade here in 1859, and the result is a port city with a European quarter, the largest Chinatown in the country and a waterfront built to be looked at. Hotel pickup is included and the price covers the vehicle rather than each seat.

What you see in Yokohama

Sankei-en opens the day, a garden of 175,000 square metres where a silk merchant collected historic buildings from across Japan and rebuilt them around his ponds. Yokohama Chinatown follows, five hundred shops and restaurants behind painted gates. Lunch is on Motomachi, the shopping street of the old foreign quarter. The afternoon runs along the water: Yamashita Park with the Hikawa Maru liner moored at its edge, the Red Brick Warehouse, the Cup Noodles Museum where you build your own cup to take away, and the Sky Garden on the 69th floor of the Landmark Tower.

How the day is paced

Pickup is from your hotel or any address inside Tokyo's 23 wards, with about an hour of driving each way and short hops of ten to twenty minutes inside the city. Yokohama is flat and the waterfront stops sit within walking distance of each other, so the second half of the day is mostly on foot. Your English-speaking guide will move the Landmark Tower to whichever part of the afternoon is clearest.

Who this tour suits

Good for a second or third day out of Tokyo, for families, since the Cup Noodles Museum is genuinely built for children, and for anyone who has had enough temples for one trip. It is one of our easier days on foot, with flat ground throughout and the car never far away. Our drivers hold a Japan Class 2 commercial passenger licence, and your English-speaking guide is the same person driving the car.

Best time to visit Yokohama

The waterfront is at its best in the evening, when Minato Mirai lights up and the Ferris wheel clock changes colour, so a later finish suits this day. Sankei-en carries plum blossom in February, cherry in early April and maples in late November. Chinese New Year in Chinatown is the loudest week of the year and worth timing a visit around.