The New Traffic Park

The boys and I set off at 8:35 this morning for the "new" traffic park. New to us anyway. 

It seems like it's been longer, but it's just been four months since we went on our Loople adventure that would change the course of the year - nay, the course of our lives.

Back in April the boys and I took the subway downtown to ride the tourist Loople bus that goes around to all the main sites that folks like to see in Sendai. I can't wait to take friends and family on it when they visit. The all day pass that includes the subway fare to anywhere in town is such a great deal.

The thing is, most of the stuff on the Loople route is really cool, but my partners for the day were 3 and 5 years old. Shinto shrines and mausoleums are not gonna do it for them. I learned my lesson after taking them to the dinosaur exhibit at the natural history museum a while back; you gotta pace yourself. 

So we're on the Loople, which is a cheesy cable car shaped bus but pretty cool because it has a standing only area in the back with brass handrails and wood finishing for gazing out and taking it all in, and every stop is displayed on a video monitor at the front - one after another, sights that little boys have zero interest in. Even the cable car shaped bus gimmick wears off after 20 or so minutes. 

I had kinda given up and resigned myself to saying at least we did the Loople, long as it is at 70 minutes, and we saw downtown and we'd have an awesome lunch and go home happy. Kenzo was paying great attention in spite of my abandonment. 

He saw this picture of an upcoming stop pop up on the screen and pointed it out to me. It seemed to be an old fashioned, historic hydroelectric power plant combined with some sort of weird sounding park. 

Well, I was just as eager to get off the bus as the boys were, so I decided we'd at least check it out. It turned out to be, indeed, a historic hydroelectric power plant nestled in the woods in an old part of central Sendai, and next to it is a park for kids where they can ride bicycles and go-karts around a big course shaped like city streets, complete with traffic lights and railway crossings.

And that has been our main go-to spot for the last four months. 

A few weeks ago we were there and I was chatting up this other dad and he said there was another traffic park in Wakabayashi Ward and it was bigger. He stopped short of saying it was better. I know why now. They both have their charms.

We set off at 8:35 this morning on a journey that has been months in the making and wrote another chapter in the grand adventure.