Why Meorenuma Park is the GREATEST Park in Japan

Starting the Day Off Right

After a successful first day Japan, I started the day off right, taking a nice morning stroll through Nakajima Park. Once again just taking pictures, admiring the cleanliness and the animals throughout. Grabbed a drink from the vending machine, It was called nectar. It was a peach flavored drink with a thicker consistency and it was sooooooooo tasty. As per usual the crows were being as cheeky as ever and the ducks were ducking away. We had our fill, so we decided it was time to head out to find a taxi to Moerenuma Park. Before I continue, to read about the history of Moerenuma Park, click here. As we ventured out of Nakajima Park, we decided to roam the side streets nearby so I could take a few pictures. It was the perfect time of day for some side street photography, roughly 7:00 AM. I also took some video of the outside of the park, the creek, just walking, etc. We chatted along the way as I explained to them what this park was all about until we reached a remote street with a bridge and a creek. Within this creek, there were dozens of Koi swimming up and down, beautiful as ever. We watched these Koi dance around for around 10 minutes because although we were in Japan, this was our first time actually seeing Koi here. A funny little thing my friend pointed out was that there was a crow perched up on the side of the bridge, vicing a ramen cup under its claws, and pecking away so I also took a picture of that. I took a look by our side and lucky us, a taxi driver was just chilling 20 feet away from us. We were originally going to walk towards the busier part of the city to find a taxi on the way, but this was perfect. We took the opportunity to walk over and get in and next thing you know, we were on our way

A Relaxing Drive to Moerenuma Park

As we made our way to Moerenuma park, I took this opportunity to take some videos of the taxi ride. The sky was beautiful with the cotton candy clouds in the sky, something about Japanese clouds just hits different. Also, the further you get out of the city, the more rural and classical the landscape becomes. This sounds obvious, but since we had only really been in the city up until now, it was refreshing seeing semi-rural Japan in the flesh. After 20 minutes of admiring the backstreets and cool little scenery, I saw Moerenuma Park in the distance and was raring to go. Little thing you should know, you can use public transport to get to Moerenuma Park. I recommend learning about the Japanese public transport system before traveling to Japan because it is extremely essential to the trip, but I explain this more later in this blog.

THIS PLACE IS STRANGE!

As we get dropped off by this unique parking garage, we pay the taxi driver, and look to our right to see a little hill that led to the second floor of the parking garage. It was only natural that we walk up it to see whats up there. We arrived very early and it was Monday so not a single soul was to be seen there except for us. We walk up the hill and immediately see this glass pyramid with paintings inside, it was an museum of some sort. I am amazed by the vast landscape that beheld my eyes. Cotton candy clouds stretching across the horizon, extremely green grass painted across wide stretches of fields, rows of pine trees stacked in random locations of the park, behind us a massive… Do I call it a pyramid? A Hill? A Mountain? I immediately whipped out my camera and started taking pictures because this place was the textbook definition of PHOTOGENIC. Another word to describe this place based on the time and day was liminal, nobody was there so it felt like we were in some random lost dimension of time. Of course there were crows there so I had to take pictures of them as well. After taking a moment to look around at this crazy atmosphere, we decided to explore what else the park had to offer.

Let’s Look Around

Chuck and I walk around the pyramid to see if theres any cool pictures I can take as Isa ventures off into his own world. As we got to the other side, it was clear that the pyramid was an art gallery of some sort, but it turns out people can rent it out for exhibitions and events which I think is really cool. We made our way around towards a path that looped us back through the parking garage and out towards the rest of the park. Noticed a path went off into this circular area of trees so we headed that way. We stop walking as we come across this nuclear reactor like installation in the middle of these trees. It turns out that it is called the Sea fountain and they host little light shows there that you can watch at night. Sadly it wasn’t running at the moment so we headed off. We walk and talk about random things along this sidewalk as we admire the absolutely stunning views of the pyramid shaped hills and cotton candy clouds that surround us. I found a good set of trees to chill out at and take some pictures of the hills and this lone man walking up the smaller pyramid hill. This guy was the ultimate model, he made for some of my favorite pictures that I took here, which says a lot because I took some pretty cool shots in my opinion. After taking a solid amount of pics, me and my buddy Chuck decided since the Giant pyramid, Mt. Moere was right there and there was a staircase, it was time to make the climb.

Mt. Moere, The Giant Grass Pyramid

Taking these stairs was the ultimate cardio. From a distance, the stairs don’t look like they would take long to go up, but thats your first mistake. I climbed these stairs for a solid 7 minutes doing 2 steps at a time and taking some moments to get some pics on the way. The higher I climbed, the better the views became. As I finally reach the apex of this massive staircase, I can’t believe my eyes because the view was absolutely stunning. Before I could admire the insane views, I had to sit down to relax after doing an intense thigh workout from going up those stairs. I could see the whole city of Sapporo, and the airport? I kept forgetting that Sapporo had an airport because the airport we flew into was New Chitose, but I snapped a solid shot of an airplane at building level about to land. I also decided to try and get some Polaroids, but I am terrible at taking them. I just can’t seem to get the right exposure and its always a gamble each time for me. After this, I just sat in silence as the wind blew across the peak and watched the clouds slowly move across the sky. Some time had passed so I decided it was time to head down to explore some more of the park. After making way down to the bottom of the goliath pyramid hill, our next stop was the other, less massive pyramid hill. At the bottom of the stairs, we met a younger couple who were out walking their dog. I got to pet the friendly dog and we exchanged our “Ohayo gozaimasu” before continuing our walk towards the pyramid. We made our way closer to the pyramid and saw a little music shell. It was nothing special at this time of day, but I imagine its amazing at night. We got distracted by this tetrahedron metal structure next to the pyramid hill and decided that was our next stop.

A Big Fat Metal Tetrahedron

We reach this metal tetrahedron and just chillax for a bit so we can look around and appreciate what the beauty of Meorenuma Park provides. I decided to stand on top of this mound that was in the center of it. I could see pretty well from up on top, but I still couldn’t see my friend Isa. he must be somewhere random taking pictures, but having a good time nonetheless. My friend Chuck also managed to take a solid pic of me enjoying the freedom on top of the mound which I most definitely posted in instagram. On the other side of the tetrahedron was a metal building with an entrance thats goes through it. Me and my friend were a bit curious about it. Could it be a secret subway station? A bathroom? Who knows? Next thing we knew, Japan weather kicked in and it started to rain.

Exploring the Mysterious Metal Building

Since it started to rain, we decided it was probably a good time to see what this metal building was all about. While we were walking over to the building, my friend mentioned that “Japanese rain just feels good” and I could not agree more. Something about it is just better than American rain, but thats probably because we were just admiring Japan. We made it to the inside of the building and low and behold, it was a bathroom. Not just a bathroom though, it had VENDING MACHINES! We decided this was a prime opportunity to relax and crack open some cold ones: Grape juice and soda. The drink selection from these vending machines is so random, but you will almost always find water so always keep some 100 yen coins on you at all times because thats the most efficient coin to use in this country for ANYTHING. I decided to see what these bathrooms looked like to compare to American park restrooms. No surprise, it was very clean, but i was surprised to see a floor toilet? Don’t ask. The rain cleared up so it was finally time to walk up the next giant pyramid. We made our way up and made a funny comment regarding that this park looked like the windows home screen and it really does. It felt like I was in an alternate dimension the whole time I was here. Half way up the hill, we finally saw our friend Isa making his way to the music shell. I also saw a hawk and took the opportunity to take some pictures of it, which was extremely hard. Trying to manual focus on a hawk with a 400mm lens while trying to track is a painful experience, but a rewarding one. It takes time, but when you get that 1 picture out of 100, you can’t help but smile. We continued to make our way to the top and then, of course, you guessed it, I took more pictures.

Heading out of Moerenuma

We were satisfied with our stay in Moerenuma Park, so our next mission was to get Isa to follow us to the exit of the park so we could leave. In hindsight, there was so much more that we could’ve seen in the park, but I didn’t actually know this. I didn’t research too much on the park because I wanted it to be a surprise, but it left a lot of mysteries for me. If you want to explore the full park, a link to a map of the park is here. We made our way to the bus station and as we made our way through a tunnel outside of the park, an aroma hit our noses. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it smelled familiar. It was floral, but amazing and the air quality of this area was… unreal. I felt like I could use 110% of my lung capacity while in the park. We made our way to a parking lot with buses, but none of them were running. One major issue that we had to figure out, how to we leave Meorenuma park? Well that’s where team work really came in, specifically, my buddy Chuck. I led us to the bus station down the road and so we waited, but once the bus arrived and we got on, my bud chuck took over the navigation role. Along the way, I recorded the trip and it ended up raining which added to a cool atmosphere. While all of this is going on, my friend Chuck noticed that we were supposed to grab a ticket while we were getting on the bus. We were unaware of this, but there is workarounds for this and Chuck made sure to figure that out. Each city has it’s own bus system and they always opperate differently. We reach our stop and easy does it, my friend Chuck had our back and explained to the bus driver as easily as he could that we didn’t have a ticket, so he calculated the fare and we dropped our yen in the bus fare bin.

The Importance of Public Transport

We end up getting off the bus and I thought It would be fun to explore this random media store. This store had a bunch of dvds, manga, video games, etc. Japan is a country that is still big on physical media, so these stores that are similar to Blockbuster are still doing really well. We ended up not buying anything because it was too early in the trip to buy anything. I ended up actually only buying a single keychain while on my 35 day trip in Japan. Our next mission was to actually make it back to the airbnb so we checked google maps, got onto the subway and headed to Sapporo Station. I say all of this like it was easy, but we were struggling to figure out the public transport this day. Heres the bottom line though, if you don’t experience Japanese public transport, you are simply an idiot. I didn’t take the time to learn the public transport before going on this trip, but through trial and error, it ended up becoming fairly easy for me to navigate and I could confidently get on a train no issue… most times. If you end up shelling yourself away and not actually getting out of your comfort zone with these types of things, you’re never gonna grow and that goes with all aspects of life. Just grow a pair, look at google maps, buy the ticket based on what google maps says, and just follow what it says. It’s actually quite simple, but you may psyche yourself out. I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid to get on the wrong train because worst comes to worst, you get off and go to the other side of the station and try again. Train tickets are super cheap, except for shinkansen, so it’s not a huge deal and theres big risk. Sorry for the pep talk, but public transport is something that I think everyone needs to learn in Japan. it makes life 100x easier. We reach Sapporo Station and since we wanted to get back to the airbnb fast, we just decided to wave down a taxi and split the fare. we made it back and decided to take a moment to relax and I took some time to grab some food, offload all my footage on my laptop, and get packed up for Mt. Moiwa.

Closing Thoughts

If you want to see the full vlog of our day in Moerenuma Park, click here. Also, make sure to subscribe to my newsletter for all things travel related so you can stay in the loop and updated. Also, if you’re looking to book any future trips, book them through here for a discount and to find the cheapest options for flights and hotels. Also, if you decided to use WayAway, and want to upgrade to WayAway plus, use code “tjsek” or click here and you will get 10% off of WayAway plus. This also helps me in return since I earn commission. I want to stay transparent with all of you, but I will only promote programs that I use and believe in personally. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read about my amazing experience in Moerenuma Park and get ready for Mt. Moiwa!