Seven Western houses remain on the hill. Yamate is a plateau looking down on the harbour at Yokohama, and the ones open to the public are the Diplomat's House, Bluff No. 18, Berrick Hall, the Ehrismann Residence, Yamate No. 234, the British House and Yamate No. 111. This was a foreign settlement, so the churches and the foreign cemetery are up here too; the whole ridge was laid out as a place to live in, rather than as a district for anyone to visit.

The houses stand apart from one another, but a promenade runs along the ridge with the harbour below it, so they can be walked in sequence over a single afternoon without any of the doubling back that a scattered set of sites usually demands. You can climb up on foot from Ishikawachō or from Motomachi-Chūkagai, and the surrounding land is expensive residential Yokohama, which means an ordinary family house often stands next door to a preserved one. None of these buildings was assembled here for display. They were built as homes and have been kept as homes, so the kitchens and bathrooms are on view along with the reception rooms.

Building on the ridge was not only a matter of the view. It was cooler up here than on the low ground and the wind moved through, and the position of the windows and the height of the ceilings are answers to the question of how to get through a Yokohama summer. Once you have noticed that, the houses stop looking like imported taste. What reads as foreign is largely a set of adjustments to the local climate, made by people who intended to stay for a long time.