Jindai Park

I love my neighborhood. It's convenient, close to the harried
mobs of downtown Tokyo, but a 20 minute train-ride puts me
to an entire other reality. There are still farms here where
for \100 I can buy a big bag of eggplants, onions, okra and
new potatoes. It takes a short bike ride to do so. Thoughts
of moving from here cause me sweaty-hand-wringing.

One block from our house is the Jindai Danshi (a Danshi
being somewhat of a low-rent apartment building) and another
block away is the Nogawa River (a glorified creek). I take a
walk or two through the area every day.

I especially like the park at Jindai Danshi. There are big
cedar trees, lots of benches (where I like to sit and read
my newspaper or book) and the "Sand Pit", as I refer to it.
The Sand Pit is a concrete "bowl" (sort of) with sand at its
bottom. Kids run circles around the concrete or slide down
its slopes. Mothers, sometimes fathers, take their kids to
enjoy the Pit. Sliding down the slopes is very popular.
Some kids flatten cardboard boxes from the near-by Super-
market to give them more speed as they slide down the sides.
Some mothers freak out that their children will get their
clothes dirty, some just take the attitude of "Let the kids
play, getting dirty is part of being a kid."

My favorite episode as I sat in the park was watching a
mother play "hide & seek" with her young son. He covered
his eyes while his mother hid behind a cedar tree. Then,
when she said go, he was supposed to find here. The mother
hid behind the tree for a long time, not knowing that her
son had joined the other kids at the Sand Pit.

"Would you like to take a walk in the park,
Stroll hand-in-hand before it gets dark?
You know a girl like you isn't so easy to find,
I'd like to make you all mine,
To keep me company, don't you see
That's the way it should be."
-lyrics by 60's~70's band Sopwith Camel.

Or the counterpoint: Tom Lehrer's
Let's Go Poison Pigeons In The Park."

My Stephen King-channeling-self imagined
the Sand Pit in the park as being part of a
gigantic trap-door spider's plan to devour
young humans. But I've often failed at presenting
myself as normal.

Martin