The other day we took a drive to Chichibu a nearly two hour drive from home. It was described somewhere as:
Chichibu is a small Japanese city located in the beautiful mountainous area 70 km Northwest of Tokyo.
The goal was to go there, pick and also eat some strawberries. Then make our way back to Tokyo. The only problem for us is that we arrived at 1:00pm, just after lunch and all the strawberry patches were closed…. YES closed. Apparently it is the local way – closed up shop on a the National Foundation Day – a national holiday for celebrating the day in the year 660BC when the first Japanese Emperor was crowned – at 11:00am….
Rina managed to ask someone at the strawberry patch that we visited for a strawberry and was given one. So what do you do when you go somewhere to do something and the thing that you wanted to do was shut up shop for the day – at 1:00pm…. well if you have kids you head to the nearest park and that’s where we went, Muse Park – apparently where Martin, Medeski & Wood performed a couple of shows back in 2004.
It is a great park on the hills overlooking Chichibu City and has a great slide – which really needs to have some mats handed out at the top on your way down.
Rina had to be literally dragged away from the place kicking and screaming…. along with screaming each time that she slid down the roller slide. The words no pain no gain are really apt for these things. You speed down the slide – gaining speed all the time and warming your rear-end in the process… the speed is good, the massaged rear is not bad… the pain after maybe not so.
But Rina found some cardboard and we had a hard time stopping her.