2015-12-07 36 139

Location

Marubayashi Central Park, Nogi, Tokyo, Japan

Participants

The Quaternary (talk) family geohashers

Plans

Today is day four of my first ever trip to Japan. Now by a strange coincidence, my brother is also in Japan for the first time, but for completely different reasons, and our trips happened to coincide in both time and space. So it was cool that yesterday and today we were able to catch up here in Tokyo.

So the geohashing gods were certainly shining their sweet smiles on us today, as lo and behold, about 30 odd miles away to the North, there was a geohash that looked to be in the middle of a park.

Looking up on google maps was the next big surprise - from the train station that is 450 metres from my brothers hotel, we can take a single train to within 800 metres of the hash - only 1250 metres of walking was required!

Surely a sign from the geohashing deities. So this morning we set off for Nogi!

It doesn't get much simplier than this.

Expedition

Actually, while it was a pretty simple trip, there was a little hiccup. Whether it was the google map gods wanting to spice things up a bit, or perhaps a bit of user incompetence, the train we took did require us to change trains at a station along the way. Of course we didn't know this at the time, so a bit of back-tracking was required once we realised that we were heading in the wrong direction.

Tracklog

The hash on the sports field.
Marubayashi Central Park.
The Nogi township.
The Utsunomiya graticule (36, 139).

Photos

About half-way to the hash the city opened up into some green paddocks.
Leaving Nogi station - the hash was within reach.
Nogi itself was pretty deserted. Perhaps everyone had biked to the station in order to go into Tokyo for work?
Being out of the metropolis, it was nice seeing some plantings for a change, such as this rose garden, ...
... a small vegetable patch, ...
... and a somewhat larger one.
We reached the park, and we were met by a somewhat daunting fence! Surely we weren't going to have our hashing hopes dashed at this late stage?
However, when we found the entrance to the park proper, it was clear that this fence was to obstruct balls from straying onto the street.
Perhaps this is a baseball field?
At the hash! And the obligatory selfie.
Looking west-ish from the hash.
Looking north-ish from the hash.
Looking south-ish from the hash.
Looking east-ish from the hash.
While the hash (in the background) was in a sports field, the other three quarters were a reasonably pleasant park, ...
... showing plenty of autumn colours, ...
... with ponds and a water feature. So we donned our running shoes and did 10 laps around the perimeter to rake up 5 kilometres.
With the help of 'Fog of World' the erroneous route is plain to see!