This large copper etching on the wall shows a cheering BayStars team. It is surrounded by the hand prints of the team and commemorates 1998, the year the Yokohama BayStars won the Japanese Baseball Grand Championships. This part of the street is nicknamed BayStars Street. -AH
On the corner of a street very close to the BayStars monument, you'll find an engraved stone monument with a metal etching of an Edison-type generator. This monument commemorates the coal-fired power plant that used to be on this site. The plant was built by the Yokohama Kyodo Electric Light Company. It began supplying electricity to 700 houses in the city in 1890. -AH
A stone pillar and statue of Jesus Christ mark the site of the first Catholic church in modern Japan, built in 1861 and consecrated the following year. The Church of the Sacred Heart was erected on Main Street in the Foreign Settlement, now Honcho-dori. Christianity was forbidden to the Japanese but this did not apply to the foreign community. As such the church and its services became something of a tourist attraction amongst the Japanese and the authorities arrested several locals as a result. The original church had a bell from France in the belfry and a statue of the Virgin Mary over the entrance. This statue now stands in the rebuilt church at No. 44 the Bluff. The three Chinese characters, ten-shu-do, meaning "House of God," were painted on a porch over the door. -AH
Outside the Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office on the Nihon Odori crossing is a stone monument with an electric wave pattern etched on it. This stone commemorates the first instance of successful telegraphing in Japan, which was over a distance of 2200 feet (670 meters) between the present Kanagawa District Court and the Yokohama Coast Guard Headquarters in 1869. The following year, telegraph lines were completed between Yokohama and Tokyo and a telegraph service was started. However, the lines were often cut or poles pulled down as the process was not understood and was called "black magic." This monument was erected in 1963 by the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, along with another in Tokyo. -AH
Standing side by side on the Kannai side of Yoshidabashi Bridge are two iron monuments. One has a map of the early settlement of Yokohama on it and the other has a picture of the first iron bridge that stood here. The bridge was built in 1869 by Henry Brunton, a Scottish engineer, who was also responsible for many lighthouses in the region, the design of Yokohama Park and the layout of Nihon Odori. It was built at the request of the Kanagawa governor, and at a time when bridges were traditionally made of wood and replaced regularly, such a strong and durable construct would have been quite amazing. Across the road, standing on the now concrete bridge, is a pillar. It marks the checkpoint on Yoshida Bridge that was established soon after the opening of the port in 1859 to protect foreigners living in the settlement. -AH
This strange monument in the shape of a piano is a tribute to the song, "Isezaki Blues," made popular by Mina Aoe. She was a Japanese enka singer with a throaty voice that gave her the nickname "Queen of the Blues." Enka is a sort of ballad music usually performed by singers wearing traditional kimonos. This monument was erected after her death since she spread the name of Isezaki-cho across Japan. A switch at the bottom of the monument will play the song. -AH