Today I took a day off from work and went with my wife to enjoy the warm weather at Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa, western Tokyo. The seasonal cosmos flowers are in bloom, making this a perfect time to visit and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
Japan has some of the most densely populated urban areas in the world, teeming with tens of millions of people. And yet, the Japanese have retained their love of nature and all things green. The Tokyo metropolis is packed with many great parks that make you forget you're still in the city while visiting them. Showa Kinen Park, built on land that used to be a World War 2 air base and dedicated to the memory of the Showa Emperor, is one of the largest.
Getting to the park from central Tokyo is easy by train. Take the Chuo line west from Shinjuku to Tachikawa Station, then transfer to the Ome line and get off at Nishi-Tachikawa Station, which is right next to the park entrance.
We got there around noon and made a pit stop at the vending machines outside the entrance before going in.
Most vending machines in major areas, like this one, take payment by electronic money smart cards. My wife paid for our drinks by Suica, which is a combination train pass & electronic wallet.
Sadly, Showa Kinen Park is not free to enter, but it's such a magnificent place I don't mind paying the small 410 yen fee that goes toward park maintenance.
The Japanese love automation. We bought our entrance tickets from this handy ticket machine, which has English language support and offers discounts to senior citizens & school students.
Upon entering the park we picked up a guide map and were greeted by views of a small lake stretching away to either side of us. It's possible to rent paddle boats or canoes and taken them out on the lake. During the weekend, the crowds get so thick you can hardly see the water due to all the boats, but today most of the boats remained tied up at the dock.
The park's main attraction this time of year, and what we had come to see, was the cosmos flowers. There are 3 different fields of flowers, with the largest located in the northernmost section of the park opposite the side where we had entered. Showa Kinen Park is vast, and it's easy to get lost if you don't plan your route carefully on the map. Thankfully it proved easy enough to find the cosmos fields.
Our circuitous path around the park is marked on this map with a blue line. The three pink blobby regions are the flower fields.
It's possible to rent bicycles and use the bike trails to get around the park quickly, but on most visits we prefer to take our time and walk, enjoying the spectacular scenery as we go. There were plenty of great sights on the way to our ultimate destination.
View from a bridge overlooking a dry riverbed. After the hot summer, there wasn't any water left here...
...but we did find this nice river a bit farther on.
We came to the first cosmos field, but no flowers were blooming yet so we pressed on.
Crossing this large open expanse in the center of the park, you can make out the second cosmos field as a strip of color at the far end.
We made it to the second field! So beautiful!
Whenever it's flower season, you can always find lots of amateur photographers lining up their cameras to get crystal clear shots of those elusive perfect blooms.
The yellow cosmos are my personal favorites.
Unfortunately, at this point we got a call from my daughter's school. My daughter had been sick in class and we needed to pick her up right away. So we had to turn back before reaching the third and final cosmos field, cutting our trip short after only a couple hours. There are many other attractions at Showa Kinen Park we didn't have time to see on this visit, including a Japanese garden with bonsai trees, a traditional tea house where you can sip green tea while admiring the view, and a kids play forest filled with all manner of curiosities that my daughter loves to spend time exploring. But we've seen those on previous visits, so I wasn't overly disappointed.
We took a different route back toward the park entrance, effectively looping around in a circle and enjoying more greenery on the way out.
The wind made a most delightful sound as it rustled through the trees & tall grass in this shady area.
I love these unusual clusters of plant life. I don't know what they're called, but they put me in mind of grass skirts topped by waving cattails.
And thus ended a memorable early afternoon. What a refreshing way to clear our heads and get out of the concrete jungle for a while. I felt almost sad as we crossed the park's border, transitioning abruptly back into the landscape of skyscrapers & apartment buildings that lay just outside this carefully cultivated paradise. But I know it won't be long before we come back again!
Links for more info
Cosmos flowers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_%28plant%29
Showa Kinen Park official web site (it's in Japanese but has some English information as well): http://www.showakinen-koen.jp/
Previous entry in my Japan Diary series: hanging out with the ghosts of GeGeGe no Kitaro
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Image credits: all images in this post are photographs taken on my iPhone.