On my last day in Tokyo, I got out of the city a bit to visit a geocache in a park at Machida. This was about a 30 minute train ride away from the Yamanote line on a private train service run by Odakyu, whose main business is department stores.
The train ride was uneventful, and finding the geocache was reasonable… considering I don’t have a GPS with me. I armed myself with Google street maps and satellite views – sadly I couldn’t find a topo – and set off. It took me about 30 minutes to find the park, basically walking street by street and checking every landmark against the street map. Once in the park, finding the cache was easy – it was just to the left of a path.
The highlight of the trip though was the awesome water art pictured to the right… it’s a seesaw that works by water action. It’s balanced (and I think spring loaded) to sit horizontally, but the weight of the water flowing from the top of the fountain eventually causes it to tip over… and splash the water down, at which time it starts to seesaw back up. There are 2 independent arms, and the whole thing rotates slowly as well. Very impressive. Water art is almost as neat as fire art, and it can safely run unattended like this sculpture!
I also shot a couple of videos – I’ll pass along links as soon as I figure out what to do with them (advice appreciated – I need to edit out the start and end, then get them on the web somewhere.)
You will have to show me this when I am in Tokyo!
Sure. Totoro says “let’s go!”
I’m not 100% sure what hours the fountain runs – it was off for about 30 min during my visit. But I went in the early afternoon on a weekday so that’s a fair bet.
There’s also a museum in the park. They were closed the day I was there but they probably know something about the fountain, and they might even speak English :)