Yamashita Park runs along the Yokohama waterfront, with the passenger ship terminal visible to the north and the bay open to the south. It is one of the few places in Japan's major cities where a seaside park maintains something like the character of a working port — the vessels are real, the scale is maritime, the light is the light of open water. The seasonal markets held here bring Kanagawa prefecture's agricultural production into this waterfront setting: vegetables from the Shonan coast, fish from the Miura Peninsula, kamaboko from Odawara, the particular diversity of food that a prefecture with both ocean access and productive farmland generates. The combination of port atmosphere and regional produce is more Yokohama than almost anything else the city offers. Yokohama's identity as a port city, open to the world since 1859, shaped its food culture in ways that are still visible — in the Chinatown a few minutes away, in the European-influenced confectionery that the city is known for, in the general cosmopolitanism of its restaurant scene. The park marché sits within this context, adding the agricultural dimension that the port city tends to downplay.