Yokosuka

I’ll admit Yokosuka wasn’t on either of our lists until a friend in Tokyo mentioned, almost in passing, that there’s a real battleship you can walk onto an hour south of the city. Lia has a soft spot for anything that sounds slightly improbable, and a century-old warship sitting in a city park qualified. We went on a grey weekday, half expecting a small museum plaque and not much else, and came away having spent the whole day there.

Standing on the Mikasa

Mikasa Park is built almost entirely around one object: the battleship Mikasa, Admiral Togo’s flagship at the decisive 1905 Battle of Tsushima, and the last pre-dreadnought battleship left intact anywhere in the world. It sits embedded in concrete rather than water now, permanently landlocked, which gives the whole thing an odd stillness — less like visiting a ship and more like visiting a very large, very specific monument. Climbing onto the deck and down into the officers’ quarters, the bridge, the gun turrets, I kept forgetting it was over a century old; the brass fittings and narrow companionways felt startlingly intact. Lia lingered longest at the bridge, where Togo apparently stood during the battle, looking out at a harbor that’s now full of ordinary ferries instead of imperial fleets.

A Navy Curry, Explained

Yokosuka takes its curry seriously enough to have turned it into a small local industry, and the story behind it is stranger than the dish looks. Imperial Japanese Navy sailors on long voyages were getting sick from a diet too heavy in polished white rice, and a British-style curry stew, thickened and served over rice with milk and vegetables, was adopted as a practical fix — a way to smuggle nutrients into a meal sailors would actually want to eat. A century later, “Yokosuka navy curry” is served all over the city with its own official recipe guidelines, and we ate ours at a small place near the port where the curry came thick, mildly sweet, and heavier than any curry I’d had elsewhere in Japan. Lia ordered a second helping of the pickled fukujinzuke on the side before we’d even finished the first bowl.

The Working Harbor

What stayed with me most, though, wasn’t the museum piece — it was the harbor itself, still very much alive. Grey US Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels sit at anchor a short boat ride from where Mikasa is permanently moored, and a small sightseeing cruise loops past them, giving you a strange layered view of a century of naval history all visible at once: 1905’s flagship, then ships that could have sailed straight out of this decade. Walking the waterfront afterward, past shops selling navy-themed souvenirs and jackets, past sailors on shore leave, Yokosuka felt less like a day-trip destination and more like a genuinely functioning naval town that happens to also keep its history on public display.

Getting There

Yokosuka-Chuo Station is the easiest stop for Mikasa Park and the harbor front, reached in about an hour from central Tokyo via the Keikyu Line, with a direct run from Shinagawa. It also makes an easy pairing with a day exploring Tokyo itself if you leave in the morning and come back by early evening. The park, the curry restaurants, and the harbor cruise departure point are all within easy walking distance of the station, so you don’t need a car or bus to see the highlights in a single afternoon.