YOYOGI PARK / 代々木公園
Location: 2-1 Yoyogi-Kamizonocho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0052
Access: 3 min walk from Harajuku Station (JR)
3 min walk from Yoyogi-Koen Station (Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line)
3 min walk from Meiji-Jingumae Station
Hours: May 1 - Oct 15 5:00 - 20:00 Oct 16 - Apr 30 5:00 - 17:00
Admission: Free (some facilities require fees)
Yoyogi Park has layers to it, having lived through a long and fascinating history. It has been a place full of possibiliites: an army drill ground, the site of Japan's first airplane flight, Washington Heights where American military families lived behind a fence, the 1964 Olympic village, and finally, in 1967, a park.
It is one of the largest green spaces in central Tokyo, and it advertises itself as the place with the widest open sky in the city. Knowing its history changes how it feels. The openness you stand in now was, not long ago, a place ordinary people were not allowed to enter.
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A visual documentation of Yoyogi Park; where Tokyo's wide sky sprawls above a ground of long history of multiple transformations.
Photo Essay
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Characteristics
Wide Sky
The central lawn is capacious and magnificently open, with no sight of any tall buildings pressing in. The park calls it the widest sky in Tokyo, which is hard to argue. After moving through the city's narrow streets, the sudden openness liberates the visitors from their daily stresses in their lives.
Layered History
Drill ground, American base, Olympic village, public park. Each era left the place and the next one was built over it. Almost nothing physical remains, just one preserved house from Washington Heights, but the history sits underneath everything.
The Forest
When the park was first built, it was planned as Tokyo's first forest park, and around a third of it was planted as woodland. The trees ring the central lawn and back onto the Meiji Shrine forest behind it, so the green feels deeper than the boundary suggests.
Reflection
To reach Yoyogi park, you can never quite avoid the burdening step of squeezing your way through the busy crowd of Shibuya--Tokyo's designated playground for both tourists and locals. Yet this required process of painfully squeezing through sweaty crowds becomes all worth it the second you step into Yoyogi park. Families of old trees greet every visitor's presence. As widely stretched out Yoyogi park is, the range of activities of the visitors are too. Musicians practice their instruments, yoga groups perform their flexibility uner cool shade of trees, and dogs leap around as they play a game of fetch. They all have one thing in common: a gleam of smile on imprinted on their faces. When they exit, they will have to squeeze through the painstakingly busy crowd of Shibuya again; however having their minds and bodies rejuvenated by the power of nature Yoyogi Park offers magnanimously, their journey back home will be much less painful, as they carry another special memory back home.