Musashi-Koganei and Kids

Once I went the other way of Musashi-Sakai station. Musashi-sakai is on the west side of Tokyo, and so when I go out, I’m always going east. Rachel found this park in Musashi-Koganei that was supposed to be nice. We had a day off of school on Thursday and there would be another international student retreat, where they would be playing yard games at the moment we were standing on the train to Musashi-Koganei. Because of the day-off, the park was full of kids and parents. Not at first. At first it was just trees and lots of shade and an old train platform and more long and dead grass, but past a few bathrooms, past the empty tents and the empty stage with just a latter on it, and past the place where I discovered how inhuman Rachel is with how high she can kick her legs, and then past where we lay down in the grass and ate her little sushi’s. We saw some playground stuff with kids on it. Then we saw a bigger, more complex hill of slides and climbing holes and things and we wanted to go on it and took pictures, and in that same spot we finally uncovered that this park was a huge fun party for kids! Hundred of devices built for fun! Kids sliding through the air clutching two parallel rope swings, getting back on again and again and again! How fun! Even a baby wants to! The babies here understand. The babies point upward to the height tabs, wanting it, whatever it is, wanting to jump up and try to slap it like the bigger kids and the two white foreigners who are adults and who are taking pictures of babies because they are so cute! Their mothers are cute! The way they interact! Rachel lights a cigarette. It’s funny, we thought nothing of it at the time. We thought it was fine because there were no ‘No Smoking’ signs on the road in the park, so it was probably ok. But, in hindsight, I think that the campaign against public smoking that happened included in its argument that cigarettes are held at eye-level with children and that children were being burned. At present, here we are at a children’s park play area, burning the end of a cigarette and trying to kick the highest point of the sign that doesn't say “No Smoking." She kicks a plastic water bottle off my shoulder in a dress. An ambulance comes into the play area whining and red and drives almost past us. Just around the corner, you can see the tops of little people’s heads stopped and looking at something, who were always there waiting for the ambulance to come with their heads poked just over the hill for us to see but we haven’t noticed until now. The ambulance parks with it’s top half visible to us. People are running under the hill where we can’t see what has happened. Adults wander, kids sprint to see what happened to who and we are watching from afar. Rachel’s cigarette is burning up and shriveling and she's squinting. Another ambulance comes. We walk on a little, away from the ambulances, away from the other side, the giant grass/stone-step sled hill that kids are still sliding all the way down, and we walk to some flowers. We wonder about going in them- there’s a little bar between us, all the way around. And the bees are working in there.


(Photo Credit for Rachel M. D.)