Summer in Tokyo is just sooo much fun. So much to do, everyone is out and about and happy and drunk and misbehavin'. I had another great weekend, this time mostly hangin' with Kat and Darin. We cooked up a nachos storm on Saturday night and then hit western Tokyo on Sunday. But see if you can guess where we went.....

Was it the moon.....? No, but almost as fabulous

Wait! Was it a magical sunflower valley? No! It was bigger than just a magical sunflower valley!

Was it an enchanted forest? Well, it DID have an enchanted forest but that was only a part of it!

Ah, was it some ancient pagan art site? No, but equally inspirational!

A therapy centre for the rare and debilitating Masai-jumping-addiction syndrome patients?

Give up?

OK. We went to the coolest (and possibly largest) park I have ever ever ever been to: Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa. So well planned and sooooooo much fun.

Wanna play frisbee golf (woohooo)? How about mini-golf on real grass? Hire a bike and go scooting through the long bikeways? Lawn bowls? Petanque? Croquet? Hire a boat? Have a BBQ? Walk through enormous flower gardens, traditional Japanese gardens, old forests, and play with miniature horses from Australia? You can do it here.

The highlights for us were:

1. The Water Playland (waterslides, a wave pool, a current pool, kiddy waders, floating pool etc etc etc) despite the fact that there was no grass to sit on, just fake stuff. Actually, there was quite an astonishing array of walking surfaces - ranging from prickly concrete to soft spongey green stuff. Heaps of fun. It costs extra to get in to the pools.

2. The Childrens Forest which featured this incredibly massive trampoline installation called the cloud forest:

As well as a bunch of really cool play areas and gaudi-inspired architecture and art pieces like huge mosaic-covered dragons you could climb in - they had sensors that emitted a roar when people moved inside the mouth. Very cool, very funny.

You can get there via the Chuo line, and follow the signs from the station - it's very well marked. A special hint - it's ¥400 to get in to the park, and if you wait till 2 pm the water park is half price - only another ¥700. ¥1100 total - less than we would have paid to catch 3 or so trains to an over-crowded beach somewhere an hour or 2 away.

We'll be organising some more expeditions out that way very soon for sure. Sooooo much fun.