Well we finally got into Spring Break mode - at the end! We headed off to one of our favourite big parks - Koganei. Today we started with the artificial grass sledding hill.
We moved on to "Rascal's Hill" where we sat and chatted while the boys played. Soon after we arrived a performer also arrived. He set up a "stage" with a green rope and entertained the crowd for 40 minutes with juggling and other feats of dexterity.
Then we moved to a quieter part of the park (we'd been in "kid-central") and had a simple picnic. Following the picnic the boys roamed around the general area,climbing things that needed climbing and with sticks, imagining various enemies that needed annihilating. They had fun with this amazing bazooka-type log.
David and I remained on our picnic mat completing an old Australian Women's Weekly Colossus (enormous crossword puzzle). Something we haven't done for a very long time! It was blissful.
When I got a bit chilly I took our lunch things and other bits and pieces back to the car. It was quite a walk, but detoured past the park's big gum tree on my return.
It still amazes me that these are so common in Australia, so common that they become part of the background to the place and you don't really notice them (unless you've been away from the country). And their absence in Japan is therefore quite noticeable. I think northern hemisphere foreigners sometimes don't feel as foreign in Japan as we do. The botanical differences between our country and this one is far greater. I tried to explain to an American the other day that we Queenslanders don't experience much "falling" in "fall", hence "autumn" is far more appropriate for us. Eucalyptus trees don't change a lot over the seasons and because they are one of the most dominant trees, the changes in season have different and more subtle markings to those in the northern hemisphere.
Once the troops got tired of their imaginary games we took the long route back to "Kid-central" for soft-serve ice cream. I enjoyed a seasonal flavour - sakura (cherry blossom). I'm hard placed to describe it to you except to say there was a tiny cinnamon-type after-taste. It wasn't over-sweet, but totally delicious.
The big surprise for me was a concrete example of how high the tsunami up north was. The top of the sledding hill was 7.5m but would have easily been covered by the tsunami which topped 13m sea walls. In places where the water funnelled up narrow valleys, I'm pretty sure I've read the water reached over 30m in height. That is huge! A five storey hospital in one town was inundated and only those on the fifth floor survived.  |
| Looking down from the top of the sledding hill. |
If I'd been threatened by a tsunami in this park (not that I would have as this is way inland) this would have been the highest point I could have easily reached. It certainly felt like "high ground", but it wouldn't have been enough. Certainly a sobering thought for a fun day out! We're doing just fine, even managing to relax, but the horror of the disaster will be a long time in fading.
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Very sobering. That's huge!
ReplyDeleteBTW, we have bluegums here too. I'd obviously miss those in Japan too :-)
Thanks for sharing the gum tree! There are a few here in Phnom Penh, mostly out near a friend's home, which I really enjoy. Recently there has been lovely tree with a proliferation of yellow flowers which reminded me of our wattle trees. They're not wattle or even really anything like it, except for the colour and clumps of flowers. Glad you have a gum tree to look at occasionally.
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