#DaysInJapan: Nogawa Park, Nature Centered Park

Nowadays, the most visited places for tourism are located in the city and urban area. Most of them are manmade recreation like amusement park or shopping district. The natural recreational places are not much visited and famous in tourism. Some of the natural resource based tourism that is still has many visitors are just places like beach or mountain, but the visitor still not as much as the other urban recreational places.

Japan has so many beautiful parks. Even in every block of residential area, there must be a park for the children playing or elder people walking and relaxing around. One of them that is visited on the excursion is Nogawa Park. In Nogawa Park, there is a meadow that usually used for people to have a picnic. In the entrance, there is also an observational deck for seeing many kinds of bird. Inside the Nogawa Park, separated by fences, there is also a park that is have a deck for walking track, so people don’t broke some plants when walking inside it. There is also flows a river called Nogawa River in this park, and there is a natural spring beside it. There are so many ducks swimming in the river, and also many kinds of fish are lived. It also have a Nogawa Park Nature Observation Center that is provide many information about the Nogawa Park Natural life like what are the species of birds that live here, the bugs and so on. Nogawa park is a great example of environmental based tourism that really made the environmental itself become the main attraction without destroying it, also while conserving and educating people about it at the same time.

The meadow

The bird observational deck

The spring

The walking dead track

In the Nogawa Park Nature Observation Center

After Nogawa Park, we walked beside the river and went to Osawa Ryokuchi Park. This park is famous with the fire flies habitat that already rare nowadays. The fireflies live in this park because it water are very clean. This place is actually a productive area.

The fireflies park

In this two parks, there are so many natural resources that can be exposed expecially for the animals like birds, fish, duck, and fireflies. This can be the tourism attractiveness especially for children. We can arrange a natural animal life tour, which is located within this two parks. Children, that is rarely see these animals in real life, can see it by their own eyes; not just in the museum which the animals all already dead and preserved or just see it on tv.

The tour should be started by seeing the birds in observatory in the entrance of Nogawa Park, then see ducks and fish in Nogawa River, get into the Nogawa Park Nature Observation Center to see the explanation, then walk to Osawa Ryokuchi Park to see the fireflies. This is not too far for children but so fun because they can see many animals. Not the wild animals like tiger or elephant, but the animals that is actually near from our live but we give just less attention to them.

This kind of natural resources tourism especially for children has so many advantages. It so educative for children, which is the information are provided from the interpretation and information board, and also the observation center. It can make the children know more about the animals around them and start to love the nature. With the tourism like this, it also can preserve the natural environment and make us nearer with it.

(Just posted my draft from year ago. Written for Regional Environmental Scince: Practical Field Training - Nogawa Excursion Report)

Bonus:

That was a loooong walk to walk (can't read what i write tho)

Strolling casually alongside the river like the real anime cast

My best shot for Ms. Nia at Jindaji Temple, our last destination that day