The Coolest Park Ever

On Saturday Jake and I met up with Marc and Billy in Kichijoji, and then rode the train out to Tachikawa. Billy told us that this was home to an amazing park called Showa kinen, so of course we had to go check it out. I must say, even Billy's glowing description of this place didn't do it justice. We walked up to what I thought was the park, and Billy informed us that this was only the pre-park - a free area where anyone could hang out. To go into the actual park, you had to pay 400 yen, so a lot of people just chose to hang out in this area. It made sense to me, as this pre-park area looked nicer than all of Piedmont Park. Once we got into the park, Billy suggested we rent bicycles to help us get around. Jake was a little skeptical at first, but once Billy explained that the park was really too big to walk around, he got on board. We each paid 410 yen for a bike for 3 hours, and we hit the trails. The park is enormous, and every inch of it is perfectly cared for. It was so nice to just ride around and take everything in. Our first stop in the park was the Children's forest. In the parks I'm used to, the kids area is usually just some swings, a jungle gym and maybe some of those little animals on springs that you can ride. Maybe in a really nice park, you'll have one of those big wooden castle like things for kids to play in. Ya, this park put all of that to shame. The first part of the Children's forest we came to was this field with little hills built into it at regular intervals, and a huge mist making machine. The mist would fill up the whole area, and kids could run around and hide between the hills. It was crazy. Then we went over to the fuwa-fuwa dome. Basically, this is a humongous white cloud like thing that is half bouncy bounce and half trampoline. Adults can go on this thing as well, and I have to tell you, it was a lot of fun! After that we walked over to the Sand Dragon area, which was basically a huge sandbox, with these enormous dragon sculptures built to look like they were swimming through the ground. The dragons were't just sculptures though - they had tunnels and slides built into them, so you could crawl all around them.

That was pretty much it for the kids area, so we all got back on our bikes and rode around a bit more. We rode past the BBQ area. Apparently, you can reserve a BBQ area (you have to do it pretty far in advance), and you just tell them how many people, and they provide everything from the grill to the paper plates to the food. How convenient is that?? And it smelled delicious as we went by. Eventually we came to the part of the park they called the open field, which is exactly what it sounds like. We laid our blanket down, and Marc, Billy and Jake spent some time throwing a football around. Then Billy showed us some card tricks that he's learned. Who knew Billy was a magician??

It was getting close to the time that we needed to return the bikes, but there was still so much more to the park that Billy wanted to show us. We rode quickly over to the water area of the park. This part was already closed for the summer, but it was still fun to look around. It was a huge water park right in the park, complete with gigantic slide, lazy river, and this crazy rope net mountain thing that sprayed water. I cannot believe that people can come hang out and use all of this stuff for only 400 yen- that's about $4.00!!!!! If I was a little kid living in Tokyo, I would beg my parents to take me there every day.

Next to the water park, there is a lake with little paddle boats that you can rent, so we rode over there to look around, but then it was time to return our bikes. We never even got to see the sports area of the park, which is filled with games like horseshoes and bocce ball. This really was the craziest park I've ever been to. It was such a fun day, and I'm glad we got to experience this part of Tokyo.

For dinner that night, Marc and Billy took us to a place in Shibuya for Yakuniku. At yakuniku, you have a little grill built into your table. There was a buffet set up of all different kinds of raw meat and vegetables, and you fill up your plate, bring it back to the table and cook it all up. It's one of Billy's favorites because he loves meat, and he loves grilling, and it's not really something you get to do much of in Tokyo. We had fun trying the different meats and trying to figure out which was the best. We didn't know what anything was because all of the signs at the buffet were in Japanese, but the one we decided was best was the ka re be.

After dinner we walked over to a place that had all kinds of games that you could play - things like bowling and darts, and of course karaoke. We decided to rent a ping pong table for a while. Ping Pong is not my best game, so I didn't do so well, but I still had fun. By this time it was already time for last train, so we all had to head home.