The Motomachi shopping street and the Yamate hillside above it have the most characterful cafes and small bars in Yokohama. Motomachi was the shopping street for the foreign community in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and still has a slightly European flavour — a mix of long-established kissaten (old-school coffee shops) and newer specialty coffee spots. The street is pleasant to walk in the morning before the shopping crowds arrive, and several of the cafes here have been doing things the same way for decades.
Above Motomachi, the Yamate residential district climbs the bluff where foreign residents built their villas in the Meiji era. A handful of those Western-style houses have been preserved and a few are open as small cafes. Harbour View Park at the top of the hill has a cafe with a terrace and views across the bay that are especially good in the late afternoon.
In the evenings, the Noge district — just west of Kannai station, a short walk from Minato Mirai — is where Yokohama's jazz bars and old-fashioned izakaya are concentrated. It is a working-class neighbourhood that has resisted gentrification and retained its atmosphere: narrow lanes, vinyl in the windows, counter seats, and cold beer.