Yokohama Confidential: Our wellness adventure in Japan

Yokohama Confidential: Our wellness adventure in Japan

welcome to the LA Confidential podcast i’m Christopher Elliott here with the boys Iden and Aaron Konichi what’s up guys hello hello and we are in Tokyo this is week four in Tokyo but we got out of town where did we go Aiden we went to Yokohama yokohama uh we will have many details on Yokohama and the other place that we went to which was kind of detourred to place called Ginsza which is really popular with tourists and uh we’ll actually no it’s a hidden gem across Tokyo and nobody knows about it and if you walk around there you will only see Japanese people oh yeah right i’m sure before we get to all that though uh this week’s question last week we asked you what your favorite holiday was to travel which was actually it turns out the wrong question because no one travels on a holiday well and the reason that we were asking that question is because here in Japan it’s something called golden week golden day golden week and that’s four holidays rolled into one week worth one week’s worth of activities yeah so this week instead of uh we decided we’re going to flip things around a little bit and ask you what is the one holiday that you absolutely avoid the one holiday that you do not travel on aaron what’s the one holiday you refuse to travel on well you know Thanksgiving is always a big holiday for travel and Christmas if you’ve ever seen a Die Hard movie so I mean I don’t know if I’m too excited when we have to travel on those days unless we’re far away from anywhere anyone any place everywhere wants to be unless we’re in a place unless we’re going to a place there where no one wants to be there that’s the only uh alternative like uh going to a Muslim country during Christmas when there’s just not a holiday over there so it’s like any other day yep which is okay but traveling over Christmas in the United States or in somewhere in the western world it gets kind of crazy so anyway um general question for you guys how do you like Japan so far like Iden what do you think of you japan is one of your favorite destination what do you think yeah I think I want to come back and go to Okinawa oh yeah I knew you were going to say that yeah yeah so Yokohama we uh went to the west of Yokohama beautiful new property very close to all of the big attractions it’s kind of like in a newer area in Yokohama because it’s you know is part of Yokohama it’s a port city that is that was landfilled and so now they have all these beautiful buildings on it mhm yeah the place is called Minato Mai which means future city when they first said it was a landfill I was like geez they used to have trash here but no apparently they just made new land no no by landfill I don’t mean like they like to use a trash dump i mean like it was they filled the maybe there’s a more technical term for that i felt like I was in Australia there cuz for some reason they call it the CBD and that’s an a that’s a very like Australian New Zealand i think reclaimed land is the is the correct term so it wasn’t like a trash dump anyway it’s definitely not a trash dump because on the first floor of the hotel there’s a Rolls-Royce dealership oh yeah yeah yeah well you know there are a bunch of uh businesses that are actually located in Yokohama i know Isuzu Fujifilm just to name a few you know there’s a Yokohama if you don’t know is the second largest city in Japan and yeah second most populous city in Japan and it was also one of the first ports to be opened back when the Americans said “Open your borders we’re going to trade with you.” Yeah it’s like more than 100 years ago and you can find a lot of nice colonial buildings um in Yokohama but the nice thing about Yokohama is that it’s a little bit more spread out so it’s not quite as compact as Tokyo um and a lot of people go to Yokohama because that’s where the cruise port is so if you’re cruising and you go to Japan chances are you’re going to go to Yokohama as well and the good thing about Yokohama is that they have really good rail connections we were able to get to where we were at Yokohama in about an hour and it only cost us like five bucks which is pretty good yeah and then you can get into downtown Tokyo with uh only 30 minutes and it costs even less so yeah actually we left the hotel when when we left the hotel they’re like should we order you a a cab or something and there was like Rolls-Royces there that could have taken you and like no we’re going to take a train uh we did not refuse a Rolls-Royce but we would never do that no no no we refused to pay for a Rolls-Royce no um it’s so close to the train station you can just you walk pretty easily so I like saying the word Yokohama too yokohama yokohama anyway Yama they also have a really good train station there we were We walked around it’s um I don’t know why but there are some train stations in Tokyo that are just they’re busy but there’s not much like Shinjuku really the train station isn’t the main attraction even though it’s the busiest train station in Japan but Yokohama Station it’s like a mall it’s literally attached to all these malls and they have uh really anything you could ever want there’s there’s much more there than any uh train station for example in Tokyo it reminds me of Kyoto cuz Kyoto station is actually connected to like four or five different malls nearby it’s very very developed so let’s talk a little bit about the Weston because I was there on assignment or I was doing a a piece on wellness but it’s a a new property uh what did you guys think of the hotel well let me think about this for a second i got a lot of words to describe it um have you even gone to the dictionary to find words to describe Well I was thinking like maybe it’d be fun if I describe it in like Gen Z terms oh no please don’t no no please don’t no well okay then i know you’re going to anyway it was a pretty skibitty hotel yeah right uh and uh theo the the rooms were pretty rzy sprite hamburger okay so anyway uh neat thing about this property is it was opened in uh 22 and it’s very similar to another hotel that Aaron and I were at the Ritz Carlton in Fukuoka in fact it’s the same builder but very different on the inside one of the cool things about it is that it’s the first Weston Hotel to have all new uh heavenly beds 2.0 those are the new heavenly beds so they really are into like wellness and sleeping tube so I got to ask you guys what did you think of the beds well I can’t say I was snoozing through the visit but I was excited because they fixed a problem that so many hotels have which is that they tuck the duvet underneath the bed and then once you want to sleep like yeah you have to rip it out otherwise you’re not very comfortable now they fix this problem the way that they fixed it is just by putting the duvet above the actual sheet um in a way that would be different so I just you know used the duvet and I didn’t even bother with the sheet underneath cuz it was just easier the beds were also skib okay did you sleep well i did i know i did sleep very well yeah I slept well too they have They’re very fluffy beds they are yeah yeah they got the duvet are very They conform to your body fluffy yes i feel like should I say I feel like if you get a BBL they’d be good to sleep in because you know you have this like new thing that’s just jutting out from under and they will conform around it you know so BBL is a Brazilian buttlft and and when you get a when you just get a BBL this is true if you watch watch a lot of plastic surgery um shows you actually can’t sit down i’m surprised you’re going along you’ll have to like um sleep on your on your front but also I mean they’re they’re so soft and conforming that you could probably sleep on your back after a BBL with these i would not get a BBL but you know you’ve had a you’ve had several so what do you think okay all right who would you recommend should stay at a property like the Weston in Yokohama aaron I think that um Western Yokohama is really just a very sleek sleepy hotel it’s in the sense that you know it’s it’s not the center of everything but you’re close to a lot it’s chill you can go outside and the streets are wide and you get a lot of space um there’s a lot of focus just on a simple practical experience i think if you want that this is the perfect hotel for you definitely yeah um there are a lot of hotels that just they’re just so pretentious and you know uptight that it makes enjoying the experience difficult and then especially if you combine that with a busy city like oh I do not envy your position yeah so Japan is pretty uh cluttery everything is in right on top of each other and the nice thing about this property was that it was uh a little bit more spread out a little bit more chill like Aaron said and so if you want to get away get a little bit of white space and breathing room it’s a good place to go and they also do the wellness thing pretty well they have uh you know they’ve integrated their menu and they’ve done their their spa and their sleep experience it’s all part of the same overall kind of package so it’s kind of cool mhm iden if you’re really into sleeping yeah yeah yeah i would say so so from there we uh we went we we didn’t really know what we’re going to do next but then we found out that we needed to be back in Tokyo for another in a very different hotel called the Yotel we’ve never stayed at a Yotel this is a relatively new um idea concept and it’s more youth oriented or young you know young people like to stay at places like this and it’s right in the middle of Ginsa and Iden tell us about Ginsa please okay well Ginsa is a great place uh if you want a a really like a hidden gem of Tokyo right nobody knows about this place there’s so much to do as well like guys especially if if you’re a tourist and like you you want to have the tourist experience but without a bunch of other tourists around you you know and have a lot of have the place to yourself right just like a giant field actually there’s nothing there i need to I need to say this one thing cuz it’s very interesting in some I I was reading about this some point in the 1800s late 1800s obviously after they after the seclusion period uh Ginsa burnt down it was named after a silver coin and they basically said “We’re going to rebuild Ginsa.” And so they rebuilt it and they built it in the style of Chicago and New York and and you can still see some some buildings that really reflect that it was built originally as a shopping district for business and for western businesses and that’s what it’s been since 1880 i believe that’s when it was rebuilt it’s been that and it continues to be that it is one of the most international parts of Tokyo and it is it’s filled with luxury brands so if for whatever reason and I doubt you you are this way maybe you are I don’t know is this each to each their own right if you want to see lots of luxury brands Gins is the perfect place to do it because you’re going to find the highest concentration um there uh yeah it’s all there it’s and it’s all luxury goods yeah yeah they like building their luxury establishments in like these really tall thin buildings for some reason like each one of them has just just this really tall one by one like really small blocky buildings it’s pretty crowded there’s 30 of them too yeah it’s really crowded and uh you will definitely meet other Americans if you go to Ginsa because all the Americans go to Gena to go shopping yeah but it’s still it’s not quite as cluttery as Shinjjuku which is just where everything is on top of you and but um but do you still if you have a fear of enclosed spaces this might not be the experience for you three most recommended things to do in Ginsa shop mhm go to Donkeyote shop and shop sit in your hotel room shop yes uh everyone goes there to shop anyway basically the hotel the hotel is very different from it doesn’t you can’t really compare it to a hotel like the Weston um it’s the rooms are smaller uh a lot a lot less expensive to um but the beds are very comfortable as well but everything’s kind of automated they have like the robots downstairs that do the deliveries and then you also have the automated checkin and checkout this is a picture of Iden here checking into the hotel that we see here and and um and they really do try they have a very different uh clientele but if you want to be right in the middle of everything it’s a really good place to go yeah another thing that I wanted to talk about actually because we were talking about Ginsa is we got an opportunity to go to Tajiki which is a part of it’s not actually a part of Ginsa but it’s very close to Ginsa and they had a market there you and I went there just today we never thought we would actually see a market like that it reminded of us of markets you know outside of Japan but it was way too hectic and busy to be like sort of a Japanese kind of experience you’d expect it not to be that more of a Southeast Asian thing more of that yeah but um to so as the date of recording this is April 26th um it is Shincha season which means literally new tea and so we Ginsza is a great place to buy tea because there’s a tea shop called Senado and then if you go towards um Tsujiki there are two other tea shops and that are not because everyone goes to when they come to Japan so if you’re coming here and you’re looking for teas and if especially you’re here during the spring and you want to try Shincha which is a specialty of spring uh then you definitely want to check out Ginsza and you want to check out Tsujiki Market especially for really anything we saw a lot of very cool things like white strawberries we did yeah we didn’t try any but we we saw them we saw a lot we also saw um other items that you you can’t really buy anywhere else i mean not just that green tea but wasabi we saw wasabi yeah at the marketplace and we were real wasabi yeah but so we’ve been here for almost a whole month now guys and I wanted to ask you for your overall impressions of Tokyo and uh also for the folks back home who are watching us who would you recommend go to Tokyo and also is this a good time of year to be here you know honestly I think I liked being here in fall a little bit more why is that um cuz just the weather okay the weather was warmer it was nicer it’s here right now in spring it’s a little bit rainy it just started oh yeah it just started raining and also the the tourism is cooling down in fall yeah i mean the the other the tourism is heating up right now yeah now things are starting to get busy yeah yeah it’s also better I think if you want to visit the mountains because really the mountains are not worth seeing if you can’t see them right so you want to be there while the weather is a little bit drier a little bit warmer things are sort of transitioning towards that winter climate and I I felt like we got a little bit more of that in fall like October september and October are pretty good times in our last podcast we made the mistake of asking the question what is your favorite holiday to travel on i wish we hadn’t asked this one because the responses were fairly predictable uh and we deserve all these answers uh Ken says “For example,”None never ever period.” Okay thanks Ken that’s according to response Ken we deserve that um how much do we hate traveling during the holidays i think we’re about to find out because we have to fly to Laos on the last day of Golden Week which is like flying you know on Christmas Day that’s going to be interesting day for Christmas yeah that should be fun um Jan says “I can travel whenever I want so traveling on on a holiday is a hard no.” Good one Jan yeah Jan again we deserve that one uh Susan says “Least favorite is now.” Uh Easter weekend especially in Germany everything is closed good Friday Easter Sunday Easter Monday which means everything is packed with customers on Saturday susan that’s a good response uh yeah i mean um the Europeans take their holidays pretty seriously uh so traveling on a holiday sometimes you’ll find mass transit is has like shorter hours and things like that it’s definitely not something that you want to be doing we’ve traveled on a holiday in Europe before you know the train stations are are the savior of Switzerland because if they didn’t have them then you would be starving on the weekends yeah because they all the grocery stores closed down so the only place legally that you can go buy groceries is the train station for some reason i don’t know this is like a Swiss roll it’s been fun hanging out with you for another 20 minutes or so and we’re going to be back next week it’ll be our last week in Tokyo so we’ll wrap things up kind of we have a couple of really cool places that we’re going to be checking out as well so we’ll tell you about those too i will say it brightened up a lot towards the because you out of the window there’s like this heaven these heavenly rays coming out of the this the clouds heavenly rays sounds like us i just thought I’d point that out cuz people are going to be like what happened to the lighting yeah the light on this podcast is weird it’s like being sucked into heaven or something trust me we wouldn’t you would be going somewhere else uh uh yeah sure bud a little bit a lot you’re one to talk yeah all right anyway we’ll see you next week okay byebye see you bye

Hello from Yokohama, Japan!

We’re in Japan’s second-largest city today at the Westin Yokohama. I’m researching a series of stories on wellness (I’ll have more on that soon). In the meantime, we’re just checking out the place.

Our question of the week: Since it’s Golden Week here in Japan, we thought we’d ask — what’s the one holiday you’d never travel on? (Golden Week is four national holidays rolled into one, so it’s got our vote.)

Yokohama is more spread out than Tokyo. There’s space to walk around. We’ll tell you more in the podcast.

Here’s our room at the Westin Yokohama. Maybe you’ve heard of the Heavenly Bed 2.0. This is the first property in Japan to have all-new Heavenly Beds. I wrote about the Bed Wars many years ago, which were actually started by Westin. We had a chance to try the 2.0 bed, and it was very comfortable.

Ginza is nothing like Yokohama. It’s a frenetic shopping district in Tokyo with crowds of tourists. We stayed at the Yotel Ginza, a hotel for a younger crowd that emphasized efficiency (much like Japan).

Here’s Iden checking into the Yotel. It’s all automated, so you don’t have to talk to anyone if you’d rather not. Iden is a people person, so he also struck up a conversation with the hotel employees. Such a friendly guy!

Don’t forget our question of the week: What’s the one holiday you’d never travel on? We’ll read your comments in the next podcast.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.elliottconfidential.com/subscribe (https://www.elliottconfidential.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)