Utatsuyamakoen Visit

Utatsuyamakoen is a park outside Kanazawa. It is actually pretty close to our place (maybe 30 minutes by bike) but we hadn't known about it until introduced by a friend of Ana's, who also showed us the way there. Last weekend we were experiencing one of the 10 clear sunny days that seem to be annually allotted to Kanazawa and biked out there to see what we could see, picnic, and generally enjoy the weather.

Really nice day in Kanazawa, at the bridge where we met up with Ana's friend

Along the way there along the river we could see the mountains behind the foothills that normally fill our horizon. There are some pretty serious peaks out there. Note the comprehensive snow cover halfway through May. The ride next to the river was very nice, but we were apparently too busy enjoying it to take any pictures. After reaching the town below Utatsuyamakoen we bought lunch supplies at their supermarket and locked our bikes up at their bike stand.

Then did a little walking through a bamboo forest...

...past a graveyard....

...and a shrine...

...before reaching the park that apparently we only have this picture of.

The park itself turned out to be very large indeed, with a multi-story building with bathrooms, ice cream, a viewing area, etc, and acres of grass along with several formal gardens in I believe it said the Belgian style. Not sure what that was about but everything was expansive and many people were out enjoying it. We put down our tarp and had our lunch. The interesting thing about lunch is that Japanese golden eagles frequent the park, and will do their best to steal your lunch. I was having trouble believing it until one of them stooped on us and basically flew between our heads while our cringing apparently covered whatever food item it had been targeting. After that we were quite careful not to expose or hold up food to attract these birds, which were large enough that I did not care to debate the ownership of food items with them. Shadows from overhead made us jumpy for a while. After we finished, however, it was interesting to watch the birds attack the lunches of people less careful than us - there were several rather spectacular strikes where the bird visibly got away with something good, which they hadn't managed from us.

After lunch we hung out and chatted and enjoyed the weather some more, eventually switching to the shade. Despite the shaded ours and our liberal applications of sunscreen, we were all sunburned to some extent, though it mostly tanned out instead of peeling, which I think everyone can agree is the preferable outcome. The park is a little bit far away for frequent use, but with nice views and lots of grass it makes a nice picnic spot for an afternoon and it was a nice relaxing time, before it gets really hot and humid out.

There were some more nice views of Kanazawa on the way back, too.