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| Minami
Honjuku Citizen Forest viewed from Kirigasaku 桐が作 |
Yokohama
has several big golf courses, such as the prestigious Hodogaya Country Club 程ヶ谷カントリー・クラブ. Actually, the campus of Yokohama National
University 横浜国立大学 was a golf course for grandees of Japanese
military before the World War II, and then the playground for the officers of
American Occupation Force, including General Douglas MacArthur. The biggest of
the golf courses in Yokohama are Yokohama Country Club 横浜カントリー・クラブ and
Totsuka Country Club 戸塚カントリー・クラブ spreading side-by-side over a
large chunk of land from 3 Wards, Asahi 旭 , Hodogaya 保土ヶ谷, and Totsuka 戸塚. As
they are private properties, they are not accessible unless you pay millions of
yen to be a member of the Club (and love artificial ponds, bunkers and
vegetation). Luckily, just next to these two golf courses, we have 2 large
public parks, one of which is Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest 南本宿市民の森 (map here).
Minami
Honjuku Citizen Forest is next to Yokohama Natural Park for Kids 横浜こども自然公園 (aka the
Big-Pond Park 大池公園). It is a park frequented by local elementary
schools for physical, art, and scientific curriculums. If you know somebody who
attended schools in Yokohama, it is quite likely that s/he says “Oh, yeah,
we’ve been there several times,” or “we had a school picnic over there.” If
that person belonged to Boy/Girl Scouts in Yokohama, they may have been
regulars to the Park for their weekend sessions.
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| Well-manicured
Kids’ Park |
As the Kids’
Park is prepared for kids to enjoy, it has amenities, like well-equipped
toilets, large parking space (with fee), a baseball field, a BBQ field, a small
animal garden, and even ice cream vending machines. If you have babies who need
a buggy, this is the place to spend your weekend. East of the Kids’ Park is
Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest so that to go there we first find the Kids’ Park.
In contrast to the Park, the Forest is, though a way smaller than the Kids
Park, for somebody who can walk up steep hills and long steps.
The
nearest stations to the place are on Sotetsu Line 相鉄線. One of
them is Futamatagawa Station 二俣川. We exit from the South
Entrance of the Station, then, simply go straight along Natural Park Street.
Passing Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mister Donuts, Starbucks, and Futamatagawa
Catholic Church (that is an established institution in Yokohama) on the left, going
through an ordinary residential area of detached houses, at the bottom of the
slope we can find the main entrance of the Kids’ Park. It is about 20 minutes’
walk for 1st or 2nd graders. Before the Kids’ Park, there
are one supermarket (Seiyu owned by Walmart), one convenience store (Seven
Eleven), and one take-out bentoh shop so that we can procure foods very easily
before reaching to the Forest. Another route is from Minami Makigahara Station 南万騎が原 which is the station next to Futamatagawa. From
the East Exit of Minami Makigahara Station to the Kids’ Park is about 10
minutes’ walk through a residential town. Finding an entrance to the Kids’ Park
from Minami Makigahara route could be tricky, and end up with the main entrance
by walking around the Park. Unless you come from the City of Fujisawa 藤沢市, considering the time to wait at Futamatagawa
Station for a regular service train to Minami Makigahara, it might be
economical to use Futamatagawa Station, as local schools with budget and time
constraints do.
From
the main entrance of the Kids’ Park, turn left and proceed along the outer edge
of the Park. Soon, we’ll find City Office for the Park Greeneries in the West on
the right. Continue walking around the Kids’ Park, there is a small crossing.
Ahead of the road, you’ll see large greenery which is the northern tip of
Totsuka Country Club. Small paved road to the right is another entrance for the
Kids’ Park. (If you can read Japanese, there is a tiny monument explaining it
was an important crossroad leading to Kamakura since Middle Ages until the late
1970s.) Here, we turn left and go into a narrow and winding road through a
community of modern farm houses surrounded by small vegetable fields. We imagine
it would be a remnant of Satoyama community. The road ends at a T crossing with
a similarly narrow winding road. We turn right here, and keep walking until we meet
a public toilet on the left. This is the toilet for Minami Honjuku Citizen
Forest.
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| City
Office |
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| Remnants
of Satoyama? |
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| Traditional
way of celebrating healthy growth of kids near Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest |
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| Minami
Honjuku Citizen Forest Toilet |
Minami
Honjuku Citizen Forest occupies the area of 6.3 ha, in the east of the Kids’
Park, and on the north of Totsuka and Yokohama Country Clubs. It became Citizen
Forest in September 1996, i.e. after the burst of the Japanese bubble, which
means many people then began to realize developing golf courses were not so
clever move for the bottom line. The Forest is well cared. The toilet has
standard facility for Citizen Forest so that it’s clean but no soap (and Japanese
style toilet bowl only). It is funny to find a notice on the wall; “Please do
not use this water faucet for washing your car.” Well, somebody may have tried
here to economize his/her water bill.
In
front of the toilet there is a tiny parking space, perhaps for 2 or 3 cars,
with a signboard saying that the space is “For visitors to the Shintoh Shrine
only.” It’s up to you how to interpret it. In any case, finding this way by car
would be difficult if you are not used to narrow winding traditional Japanese
road. Sure enough, on the right of the toilet, there are steep steps which bring
us to a small Shintoh shrine. It is Johda Shrine上田神社, a very very small shrine
standing next to a huge gingko tree. According to Kanagawa Shrine Agency website, its origin is unknown, but a fairly old forest village shrine. Simply put, Japanese Shintoism is animism that
finds gods everywhere. Japanese have been thinking there is something spiritual
in forest, made it an object to worship, and built a shrine within it, as here.
The village
shrine forests have been revered for generations and some of the original
vegetation are preserved. In front of the Johda Shrine, there is a big camellia
tree. It is registered by the City of Yokohama as a special wild tree. Back of
the shrine is a small precipice, and at the right bottom of it, there also is a
small spring.
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| Welcome
to Johda Shrine |
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| Johda
Shrine |
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| Gingko
tree |
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| Believe
it or not, it is camellia. |
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| A spring.
I don’t recommend you to drink it, though. |
Springs
are something lovely we find in the forests of Yokohama. Yokohama actually has lots
of small springs coming out of many crevices of land, sometimes even at the top
of a hill. Often they are very discreet small ponds with clear water
continuously pouring out in a quiet forest. Some become an origin of a river,
or reach to a larger pond nearby probably through underground water way. I
guess water from this small spring of Johda Shrine is going to the big pond of the
Kids’ Park, and / or to Futamatagawa (“Futamtata River” which means “a river at
a cross road”). Probably, ancient people of Satoyama built this shrine because
there is a spring. The small monuments on both sides of the steps to the shrine
tell us people felt something special at this place … Ghost? Spirit? … and
thought it was necessary to placate them in some way or another. … Does the
ghost of Minami Honjuku Forest think golf courses OK?
 |
| Oh
Ghost, |
 |
| please
be kind to us … |
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| Actually,
this place is a territory of her. |
From
the Shrine, on the right, there is a sign saying “Komorebino Hiroba (こもれびの広場 An
open space with sunshine filtering through foliage), this way.” Climbing up the
steep steps, and we find ourselves on the ridgeline. The Forest is very well
kept with some landscaping along the way. Although the area of the Forest is not
tiny, the only allowed routes for the strollers are the main ridgeline and 4
slopes from two valley sides. The entire length of the route would be about 1
km so that it’s not that substantial. Both sides of the route changes its
scenery with seasonal flowers from camellia, plum, cherry blossoms, wisteria … The
only tricky part is its steep slopes to reach to the top.
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| Sign
to Komorebino Hiroba |
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| We
have to climb this steepness. |
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| Inside
the Forest along the route, there are 5 maps like this. |
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| There
are 5 picnic areas. |
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| Sign
posts are also clearly shown. |
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| South
slope up to the ridgeline. This road is wilder than that from the Shrine. |
The
west side of the hill mainly consists of planted coniferous trees, giving us
calm, a kind of meditative air. The east side is of broadleaf trees including
cherry, plum, and wisteria. The Forests gives the visitors the delight of fresh
colors for the season. I visited the Minami Honjuku Forest during early summer
when the broadleaf trees presented us green so refreshing. Unlike the
neighboring parks of the Minami Honjuku Forest, the place is not for the people
who wanted to do something else, like golfing or baseball. We can come here
simply to breath phytonzid. We sit on a bench in the forest calmly and meditate
the joy of being in the forest. The birds are chirping, and a magnificent
butterfly passes by in front of you.
 |
| I
think somebody’s doing landscaping here. |
For you
having a will to walk further, you can take a narrow pedestrian road running
between the Country Clubs and the Kids’ Park / Citizen Forest which is a partof Green Road for visiting parks in Asahi Ward あさひグリーンロード公園めぐりコース. The rout itself is not congested
so that we can have a relaxing day of enjoying forest (large and small) in the
middle of Yokohama.
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| A part
of Green Road leading to Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest |
If you find a problem in the Park, please make
a contact with
Office for the Park Greeneries in the North 北部公園緑地事務所
Yokohama Municipal Government Creative
Environment Policy Bureau 横浜市環境創造局
Phone: 045-311-2016 (I guess in Japanese only)
FAX: 045-316-8420 (I hope there is somebody who
can read English …)
