SHINRIN-YOKU: FOREST BATHING 森林浴 Higashi Takane Park 東高根森林公園 #shinrinyoku #forestbathing #kawasaki

The City of Kawasaki, the other side of Tama River when you look from Tokyo, does not in general have a connotation of greenery. Just checking in Google Earth, we easily recognize, aside from 100m or so wide river side of Tama River, the place is almost covered by buildings and industrial roads. No one says definite Nah about the location with a rotten dead body in “River’s Edge” (not by Tim Hunter, but by Kyoko Okazaki) as somewhere in Kawasaki. Though, miraculously, the city has several secluded forests, one of which is Higashi-Takane Forest Park of Kanagawa Prefecture 県立東高根森林公園. Let’s go there this week. As this is a well-managed park, finding an abandoned body would be extremely difficult, I bet. 😌 Roughly speaking, the park is prepared over 11ha of a traditional farming community existed until about 60 years ago. During the 1950s and 60s, such villages around the downtown Tokyo were massively converted into residential areas for the labor force of Megalopolis. The places of current Midorigaoka Cemetery and Higashi-Takane Park were also planned for houses and condos. When in the 1960s developers started to bulldoze the rice paddies, vegetable fields and firewood forests, they happened to discover there massive underground remains of human settlements dated back about 2500-1500 years ago. Moreover, scholars found the forest next to the cultural heritages was made of 150-200 years old large Quercus myrsinifolia (white oaks), which was already rare scenery in such a close...