Chiba Hotels

Chiba is the capital city of Chiba Prefecture, Japan. It is located approximately 40 km east of the center of Tokyo on Tokyo Bay. Chiba City became a government designated city in 1992. Its population as of 2008 is approximately 960,000. Chiba City is also one of the Kantô region's primary seaports, and is home to Chiba Port, which handles one of the highest volumes of cargo in the nation. Much of the city is residential, although there are many factories and warehouses located along the coast. There are several major urban centers in the city, including Makuhari, a prime waterfront business district in which Makuhari Messe is located, and Central Chiba, in which the prefectural government office and the city hall are located. Chiba is famous for the Chiba Urban Monorail, the longest suspended monorail in the world, as published in the Guinness Book of World Records. Some popular destinations in the city include: Kasori Shellmound, the largest shellmound in the world at 134,000m2, Inage Beach, the first artificial beach in the nation which forms part of the longest artificial beach in Japan, and the Chiba City Zoological Park, which gained popularity because of the red panda Futa, who stands with human-like posture. In fiction, a futuristic Chiba City is the setting of one portion of William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer.