Kannai District

Kannai is the historic and administrative heart of Yokohama, the very ground on which the modern city was born. The name means 'within the barrier,' a reminder that when Yokohama opened as a treaty port in 1859 the area was sealed off by checkpoints to control the movement of foreigners doing business at the newly opened harbour. Everything inside the barrier was the foreign concession; the traces of that origin still define the district's dignified, faintly cosmopolitan character.

Today Kannai is where you come to read Yokohama's history in stone. Its centrepiece trio of landmark buildings, affectionately nicknamed the King, the Queen and the Jack, embody the city's early-twentieth-century confidence. The 'King' is the Kanagawa Prefectural Government Building with its stout central tower; the 'Queen' is the Yokohama Customs Building, crowned by a graceful green dome; and the 'Jack' is the Yokohama Port Opening Memorial Hall, a red-brick clock tower. There is a well-loved local superstition that seeing all three from one spot brings good fortune, and hunting down that vantage point is a pleasant challenge.

The district is laid out around wide, leafy boulevards, most notably Nihon-odori, Japan's first Western-style tree-lined avenue, which sweeps grandly from the government quarter toward the waterfront. Along and around it stand museums, banks and civic institutions housed in handsome historic buildings, including the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History and the Yokohama Archives of History, which occupies the site of the former British consulate. Yokohama Stadium and its surrounding park bring green space and, in baseball season, roaring crowds.

But Kannai is not merely a museum district. Its back streets hide one of Yokohama's densest concentrations of small bars, izakaya and restaurants, and after dark the area between the station and the stadium hums with office workers loosening their ties. It also connects seamlessly to the city's other treasures: Chinatown lies just to the south-east, the retro avenue of Bashamichi runs north, and the harbourfront of Yamashita Park and Osanbashi Pier is a short, flat walk away.

For the visitor, Kannai works best as a walking canvas that stitches together the rest of central Yokohama. Spend the daylight hours admiring architecture, strolling Nihon-odori and dipping into a museum or two, then let the evening pull you into the lantern-lit alleys for grilled skewers and local craft beer. The terrain is flat and the pavements generous, making it comfortable for all abilities.

Access is exceptionally easy. Kannai Station, on both the JR Negishi Line and the Yokohama Municipal Subway Blue Line, sits at the district's centre, while Nihon-odori and Bashamichi stations on the Minatomirai Line serve its edges. Few places let you stand so literally on the spot where a country reopened to the world.