Showa Kinen Park
Today we took a long subway ride out to the west of Tokyo to vist Showa Kinen Park. There was a 90% chance of thunderstorms, but we decided to risk it. Despite ominous skies all day, we were very fortunate that it didn't rain a drop.
Showa Kinen used to be a U.S. Air Force base; when vacated, it was turned into an enormous park, with more activities than you could do in one day. Walking through this park is much like visiting Japan - you really don't find anything, you just happen upon it. But what you happen upon is usually quite worthwhile, often better than what you were looking for in the first place. Below is what came across our paths:
We were welcomed by giant mosaic dragons. Laurea kept telling us, "Be quiet, so they won't wake up!" and to humor her, we went along. Boy, were we all scared when we walked into one dragon that actually roared! Little did we know that some are equipped with motion sensors to make noises. It took some pursuding to get her to walk through the playground again.
The snake was a bit more docile, holding only a sandbox in its large mouth.
We moved onto the elastic hammocks, which are nets that you could hang from, jump on, or otherwise scare your parents to death on.
We found a gigantic bouncy protoplasmic-shaped trampoline. Laurea was in heaven, since it was "the biggest bouncy castle ever!" Some kids could jump sky high on this thing.
Next was the "Sun Pyramid," which had a beautiful mosaic sun up top and a view of the park.
From the top of the pyramid, you can see the mists, where kids can play being ninjas or various otherwordly characters.
We ran across a very long roller slide, the experience of which was sort of like a very bad massage.
Our penultimate stop was a log cabin-type house that had a place to rest, stories, and craft areas, including woodworking. Nearby, there was a "grass flute" (i.e., a piece of grass) playing group. Some people were quite good, and we even caught an "Oh, Susannah."
We ended up by taking the park train to the front, where Russ and Laurea went swimming in the "rainbow pool," which included a wave pool, a woodland stream, fountains, and water slides.
We missed the tea pavilion (which the brochure notes we can utilize to recite our haiku or Chinese poetry), boats, mini golf, bicycling, dragonfly marsh, and Japanese garden. In any case, it was a very fun way to spend our last weekend in Yokohama.
Showa Kinen used to be a U.S. Air Force base; when vacated, it was turned into an enormous park, with more activities than you could do in one day. Walking through this park is much like visiting Japan - you really don't find anything, you just happen upon it. But what you happen upon is usually quite worthwhile, often better than what you were looking for in the first place. Below is what came across our paths:
We were welcomed by giant mosaic dragons. Laurea kept telling us, "Be quiet, so they won't wake up!" and to humor her, we went along. Boy, were we all scared when we walked into one dragon that actually roared! Little did we know that some are equipped with motion sensors to make noises. It took some pursuding to get her to walk through the playground again.
The snake was a bit more docile, holding only a sandbox in its large mouth.
We moved onto the elastic hammocks, which are nets that you could hang from, jump on, or otherwise scare your parents to death on.
We found a gigantic bouncy protoplasmic-shaped trampoline. Laurea was in heaven, since it was "the biggest bouncy castle ever!" Some kids could jump sky high on this thing.
Next was the "Sun Pyramid," which had a beautiful mosaic sun up top and a view of the park.
From the top of the pyramid, you can see the mists, where kids can play being ninjas or various otherwordly characters.
We ran across a very long roller slide, the experience of which was sort of like a very bad massage.
Our penultimate stop was a log cabin-type house that had a place to rest, stories, and craft areas, including woodworking. Nearby, there was a "grass flute" (i.e., a piece of grass) playing group. Some people were quite good, and we even caught an "Oh, Susannah."
We ended up by taking the park train to the front, where Russ and Laurea went swimming in the "rainbow pool," which included a wave pool, a woodland stream, fountains, and water slides.We missed the tea pavilion (which the brochure notes we can utilize to recite our haiku or Chinese poetry), boats, mini golf, bicycling, dragonfly marsh, and Japanese garden. In any case, it was a very fun way to spend our last weekend in Yokohama.
posted by Russ Olwell at 6:02 AM
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