Aka Renga Park – Mustangs – Beer – KUA’AINA Burgers

What a great spring (almost felt like summer) day in Japan! Today it was a high of 21 C (70 F). We went to Aka Renga Park (Red Brick Warehouse Park) to let our daughter run free and enjoy some nice Hawaiian Burgers from KUA’AINA. We try to stop by and get a burger from here at least twice a year…I love ‘em! This weekend at Aka Renga there was a small car show of Ford Mustangs and a few of the them were modified by Saleen. Being from Detroit, this was a strange but welcome sight to see more than one Mustang at a time in Japan. Once in while you might see one or two driving around on the weekends in Yokohama, but normally you see more Ferrari’s than Mustangs. After our daughter had the time of her life running around and chasing after balloons with other kids, the wife and I enjoyed a dark Kirin Ichiban and looked out into Yokohama Bay and watched as giant ships came and went through the port. Check out a few more picks of our time at Aka Renga Park at my now porn-free flickr account…akarengapark.

 

Fun in Yokohama on Saturday

Kyosho put on a show in Queen’s Square with their Mini-Z R/C cars. I could have stuck around watching them race all day, but we were taking our daughter to the park to run around. The Mini-Z cars are 1/24 and 1/27 scale and have tons of awesome speed and handling for such tiny cars. I have loved R/C cars since childhood and used to dream of designing and engineering them. Yeah, I used to dream of working for Lego and Kyosho when I was a kid. I built quite a few R/C kits in my days and enjoyed racing every summer with the other kids in the neighborhood. I guess that is why I got in to the automotive engineering field…I really never thought about until after watching these tiny cars zip around. Fun stuff!

A short walk past Queen’s Square and we ended up at the Pan Pacific Convention Center. Surprise…we ran right in to a food festival for Yokohama and Niigata, Japan to celebrate the G8 meeting, coming soon. It will take place in Yokohama and Niigata. We enjoyed some dark local beers from the Yokohama Brewery and lots of good food from the Niigata prefecture (my wife’s home prefecture).

They also had some crazy bicycle-like, 3 passenger, taxis that you could take a ride in and…

they even brought in some snow from Niigata for all to play in. They also had a small slope (not shown) for kids to try some sledding. Good times for all. It was nice to see some snow, as Yokohama normally gets some flurries…this year, none. We actually witnessed about 5 mins. of flurries from our balcony this winter, but when we went down to the street level…there was nothing. So, for the official record, there has been zero snow recorded in Tokyo and Yokohama for the 2006-2007 winter. Boo.

A fun weekend for the the Hama-ko (people who grow-up in the Yokohama area) to enjoy. On Sunday there was an all women relay marathon. The last I knew…the Russian’s were in 1st, U.S. was 2nd, and Japan was 3rd. Check google for the latest results.