Yokohama  is the second largest city in Japan by population, and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area. Yokohama's population of 3.7 million makes it Japan's largest city. Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century, and is today one of its major ports along with Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Hakata, Tokyo, and Chiba.Yokohama  literally means "horizontal beach". The current area surrounded by Maita Park, the ÅŒoka River and the Nakamura River had been a gulf divided by a sandbar from the open sea. This sandbar was the original Yokohama fishing village. Since the sandbar protruded perpendicularly from the land, or horizontally when viewed from the sea, it was called a "horizontal beach". In Yokohama, the climate is temperate, with fairly mild and sunny winters, and hot, humid and rainy summers. Like the rest of Japan, the city is affected by the monsoon circulation: in winter the northwest cold currents will prevail, while in summer they will be replaced by hot and humid currents of tropical origin.