We usually go to Isezakicho, the seedier, more ragtaggle side of Kannai station in Yokohama where all the thrift shops and vintage perfume and Thai karaoke bars are, but the beauty of essentially being out of the world for a while, but ready to plunge back in it, is that you suddenly wake up one day with a place you want to go seething in your conscious like a pre-ordained destiny, a place you haven’t been to for a very long time – but you know you have to go to; there and only there; particularly on a cold, crisp but beautifully sunny Sunday stretching out before you when you just want to see and be and explore in wider, open spaces. And so we decided to go for a long stroll from Motomachi to Yamashita Park and through to the other side of the port of Kannai, the more stately and elegant side of the city with its European inspired stone buildings, maritime flavour, and melancholic, almost haunting, aura.
Through the Christmas music of the quaint and chichi Motomachi shopping street we passed by the ocean and Marine Tower; Barney’s New York; and through to Yamashita Park : families strolling, dogs frenetic, magicians doing tricks, ships at port of call, and, to our delight, an unexpected rose garden that was almost magical in its prettiness.
As chance would have it, being rather rose-oriented myself of late, I happened to be also wearing Rosarium Shiseido (the shampoo and the conditioner, which, though disastrously wrong for my hair type – it looked like pitiable strands of seaweed clinging to a rock, the worst hair day ever, the only negative point in what was otherwise a delightful day and evening out..) still does smell very pleasing; simple; a tea rose, rose hip and ‘living rose’ classical, accessible rose fragrance that provided a realistically perfumed backdrop to the stunning preponderance of flowers : the roses themselves, beautiful, fluttering in the cold breeze in their rows – inexplicably, unscented.
The Black Narcissus 