Showa Kinen Park

Sunday we had sunshine! We spent the day at the amazing Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa City. It has much to offer for both children and adults, and was surprisingly not as crowded as we expected. The open areas equate to almost 400acres. The space was originally a Japanese air base and later an American Army base. When the Army ceased operations in the late 60’s, the government built the park to commemorate the 50 years of reign of the Emperor Showa (better know outside of Japan as Hirohito). We started our day with lunch by the lake, and then moved onto the lake for a ride in the paddle boats. Next, we took a tram ride to the other end of the park to play in the Children’s Forest. This included a cool roller slide, a 1,600m² bouncing dome, a large rope hammock area for climbing, and played chase through the mounded area that at certain times of day becomes the Misty Forest. White mist appears to create a fairy tale like atmosphere for children to play fantasy or ninja. There is much we didn’t find time for, the water park, the bonsai garden, the Japanese garden, the fields of wild flowers, the reproduction farm village, croquet, or mini golf. Next time we definitely want to take advantage of the tandem bike rental. At bedtime I asked Roo to describe his favorite thing at the park. He said “when we were running pretending we were driving race cars”. This boy likes to run!

My camera ran out of batteries, but I did get this video of the bouncing dome with my mobile phone video. Roo was having fun until a dad playing chase with his daughters knocked Roo off his feet. (That is Ryan in the yellow.)