Japan Trip Report – Part 4 (Taketori Park)
The Tako family is currently traveling around Japan for the month of October, and we’re blogging about our travels. In earlier posts from this series I covered where we’re staying, a mini-trip to Wakayama, and how to eat affordably in Japan. In this post (Part 4), we kicking back from our busy travel schedule, and heading to the park.
Does a trip to the park sound boring when Japan has ancient temples and castles to explore? Tourist attractions are great, but they can also be expensive and exhausting.
Frankly, after you’ve seen about a dozen temples they all start to look the same anyway. Certainly not something a 2 year old and a 4 year old are going appreciate for a whole month. Instead, we take the kids to the park!
Japan’s parks have plenty to offer — Not only does the country appreciate aesthetic beauty, but they also value how parks enrich the lives of families.
Let me show you what I mean…
Beautiful Parks
I tend to think of Tokyo as a giant concrete jungle. Kilometer after kilometer of concrete, but if you get outside the “big city” in Japan it’s actually a really beautiful country. Japan’s public parks are no exception, and they’re absolutely free.
After our rainy trip to Wakayama, we needed to get out and enjoy some sunshine. A day-trip to the park seemed like a good opportunity, and the kids could burn-off all that excess energy too.
We decided to visit a local park called “Taketori Park”. It’s a short 15 minute drive from our temporary residence.
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to visit a number of Japan’s public parks, and they can be very beautiful places. It’s easiest to show you what I mean with photos of the park.
Bamboo groves are always nice to look at, and Taketori park has a beautiful one.
Even in October, flowers are still blooming and they delight visitors with delicate beauty.
Taketori park is built on a hillside, with walking paths that meander around it. A wide playing field sits at the bottom, and suburbs off in the distance. The fall leaves are only just starting to show their colors here.
The park even has fruit trees. My kids found this persimmon tree (they’d never seen one before), but the fruit wasn’t quite ripe yet.
Play Structures
Natural beauty only goes so far when you have to entertain a two kids. Thankfully Taketori park provided the “traditional” play-type structures that you’ll find in most parks.
Except there wasn’t just one! This park had a least four big play structures.
That should be enough for any kid, right? Well, Taketori park had a few more surprises in store for us!
The Hairy Green Slide
When I think of public parks in the States, I usually think of a large grassy area with a slide, swings for kids, and maybe one of those plastic jungle-gyms. Japan does things a little different (of course), and we found this crazy-huge green slide in one section of the park:
Yes, that’s a giant blue-green slide!
This was something I’d never seen before. Not only was it huge, but it was a hairy monster slide.
The slope was built-up from individual fibers, which I can only describe as “some kind of plastic”.
A helmet and a sled are required to go down, but this equipment is kindly provided for free by the park and park volunteers.
Big grins were easy to find that day…
Unfortunately adults (aka big kids) aren’t allowed to use the slide (booo!), but my son was happy to provide a video demonstration of how this works.
Again, all this was free! Who says Japan needs to be expensive?
Roller Slides
Taketori park also had something called a roller slide! What’s a roller slide you ask?
Well, little Tako Jr. #2 was brave enough to try-out this small roller slide for us:
Think of it like a whole bunch of metal rollers lined-up one right after another. The kind of thing you’d find on a industrial conveyor belt, and it makes for a really fast slide.
The main event of the day was a huge roller slide that starts at the top of the park. Check this baby out!
Now that’s a slide! The pictures don’t really do it justice — This roller slide was HUGE (and again — completely free to use).
The scale and the speed of what’s going on here is a little hard to convey. Adults are allowed on the slide, so I shot some video going down it… for “demonstration purposes”.
Conclusion
When you travel slow, not every day is going to be filled with exciting tourist attractions. Some days are “rest” days and you take the kids to play at the park. But that doesn’t mean it’s boring — Even those days can be filled with exciting new experiences and discoveries.
Japan’s public parks are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Not only are they pleasant and beautiful, but they provide plenty of free fun for families like mine. If you ever travel to Japan with your family, I highly suggest checking one out!
I love the videos. I went on the roller slide at Robot Park in Tokyo. I never thought of using a cardboard to sit on, it seems like you can go down faster.
The grass slide looks very interesting and looks pretty fast. Thanks for sharing. Enjoy your time there!
-Mike
Thanks Mike! We’re having a great time!
You seem to be pretty experienced when it comes to Japan. Did you live in Japan once?
We never lived there but I must have visited a half dozen times or so. It is a wonderful place to visit.
Take care,
Mike
Wow the parks are absolutely beautiful! I like that it’s a perfect combination of nature and a well-equipped playground for kids.
It’s awesome they have fruit trees in the park too! Are visitors allowed to take as much fruit as they want? Persimmons are expensive in the US!
I’m not clear on the legality surrounding the fruit trees. We didn’t pick any fruit mostly because it wasn’t ripe, but I imagine the local people (or local homeless) end-up picking it “after hours”.
That is an awesome park. RB40jr would love it and he’d probably spend most of the day there. The slides and the play area are really cool. The parks in the US are nice, but the play areas are pretty boring.
We always look for playground now that we have a kid. Never notice them before. 🙂
It WAS a really awesome park. I get to see a lot of parks these days and I was really impressed. Beautiful place with tons of stuff for kids to do. I didn’t even mention the pirate ship or the zip line in the post (I ran out of time).
Parks like those in the U.S. would charge for admission. Love the videos! I, too, like to test out rides and make sure they’re safe for my kids. Sometimes multiple times in order to get a better sampling…for quality assurance purposes. 😉
I know what you mean! It’s important to have a high quality slide experience for the kids. I do plenty of testing myself!
Oh god I love those play structure are so unique and clean. I haven’t been to a play park in a while but from what I remember: rusted chains and very color faded structures that aren’t that fun in the first place. Tsk tsk, I wonder how much it costs to FIRE in Japan.
FIRE costs are higher here because of a couple things — first taxes on capital gains and dividends are higher at 20%. Those taxes also start on the very first dollar/yen instead of $75k (approx) mark that couples enjoy in the states.
There’s also town and prefecture taxes, but I don’t believe these are based on income (i.e. it’s a flat per person tax)
Sales taxes on all purchases are 8%, but this is scheduled to rise to 10%
Healthcare is probably cheaper as it’s a nationalized single payer system (similar to Canada).
So while some things are cheaper, other things are more expensive. Cars for example, can be quite costly.
Wow the roller slide looks so FUN!! I would be a little scared to go on it, but I do like that there are barriers to prevent one from flying out. Your sons are adorable, the weather looks pretty good in Japan right now!
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The weather was great, until Typhoon Lan hit. We had several days of constant rain, but thanks to Financial Independence it wasn’t a huge pain for our travel plans.
This really does look like the best-est park in the whole wide world! Look at it! I want to go to Japan just so I can go to that park. They should make a park like that where adults can go down all the slides too 😛
Indeed, it *is* a pretty fantastic park! Parks like this really aren’t all that unusual in Japan either!
Wow, I didn’t know there were so many great parks and play structures for kids! I think we’ll need to convince the RootofGood clan to come along next time we go to Japan!
Every time we visit Japan seems to gets more and more kid friendly. It seems like the country is trying to promote having kids (or at least make it easier).
I think the RoG kids would definitely have a blast here!
Our final two days in Tokyo passed like a blur, as we made the most of our Japan Rail passes and cheap subway fare. Instead of climbing Tokyo Tower or the Skytree, we went to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Center, a free observatory where you can see both.
Thanks for share with us the Taketori Park information! This is the most natural for food trees. I also love it’s Hairy Green Slide 🙂