Walking Like An Egyptian…In Yokohama

Blessed with a rare shared holiday for Marine Day, Mrs. Kangaeroo and I headed off to her much-loved Yokohama to enjoy a day of walking like Egyptians.

We didn’t really walk like that, but I needed a snappy line for the blog title and lede, so that’s how it turned out.

But there was a strong Egyptian flavor to the day, and not just from the blistering summer heat that pushed the temperature well into the deep 30-degrees Celsisus range.

I’d woken in the morning full of guilt because during the wonderful garden party we’d held the previous day, for which Mrs. Kangaeroo had worked like a slave, old dunderhead here had forgotten to take on the normal job of visually documenting the event as I would normally do.

I’ve no other explanation for not taking photos except that it was probably just a senior moment.

Anyway, I vowed to myself that I would please Mrs. Kangaeroo however she desired to make up for my lapse (though I didn’t tell her this), and her decision was to head to Yokohama, which is one of her favorite destinations in Japan, to take part in a virtual reality tour of Egypt.

We got to the Horizon Of Khufu event not long after 10 a.m. only to be told that same-day tickets were sold out until the 7:30 p.m. show. We weren’t keen on hanging around all day, so decided to give it a miss. We knew that we had taken a risk by just turning up to the event without an advance reservation, but were still disappointed not to be able to see it as Mrs. Kangaeroo has been keen on this for a while.

Initial thoughts of turning back and going straight home gave way to to heading to Chinatown and pigging out on fancy food, but then that idea gave way to another Egyptian opportunity.

We headed off to Plot 48 in Yokohama Minatomirai, where the Tutankhamun Museum held the Mysteries of Tutankhamun immersive exhibition, which turned out to be quite decent. 

Although the displays at the museum are all replicas, it was still wonderful, and made all the more fun because our visit coincided with pet day, so many people had brought their cats, dogs, and even a meerkat and a bloody galah (carried in a bird packpack!)

Not only did the trip rekindle fond childhood memories of a brief all-encompassing fondness for ancient Egypt (and a school project on the United Arab Republic), it also reminded me of my time in Cairo. Specifically, the image of watching a couple of blokes working on a tower that I saw from our client’s office window as the sun went down. I can still see their silhouettes in my mind’s eye about 35 years after the event, which I photographed, but could not recapture the magic of the moment. I’m grateful this image is still etched in my brain, though, and that I actually got to visit Egypt to be able to see it.