Labor Day Stroll to Hikichidai

It’s so interesting to watch the seasons change along the Hikichigawa (Hikichi River). The top picture was taken Labor Day weekend from the same bridge where I took this one in the spring—pretty year-round! 🙂 Chris and I walked to Hikichidai (Hikichi Park) via the Hikichigawa. We’d walked through the park on our way to the Yamato Shrine Sale in the winter when the park was kind of bare, so we felt like we’d never been there before when we saw it in all its summer glory. We watched a little baseball (at the end the players shook hands with the other team, then everyone bowed to each other in two long straight lines). We watched a little fishing (no one was catching anything as far as we could tell). The main entrance to the park has a three-person family fountain surrounded by mist. Nearby is the indoor pool. We went in to check it out and for a couple bucks you can go down the water slides, float in the lazy river or swim laps—so long as you wear a swim cap and don’t mind being the only hairy, ogre-like, non-Japanese person. My English students told me this pool is heated in the winter thanks to the area’s burnable trash. That makes sense; all the burnable trash trucks are always pulling in and out of the factory/incinerator at the bottom of the hill the pool sits on. Well there you have it.