Monday HeyGo Round-up
Jan. 17th, 2022 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse
Image: Wisteria bridge in Ashikaga Flower Park, Asikaga City, Tochigi, Japan
Like a crazy-person, I got myself up out of my warm, snuggly bed at 2:15 pm Central Standard Time (aka -6 GMT) to join a live-stream in Tochigi, Japan of the light show in Ashikaga Flower Park. The best part of this foolishness is that I THOUGHT that the tour started at 2:30, but it actually started at 2 am, and so I missed the first fifteen minutes. On top of that, our guide, Erika, had a shaky connection and so much of the tour was me refreshing and/or squinting at pixelated shots.
But when things were clear, it was a pretty nice trip.
Image: blue (at the moment) color-changing tulip lights along a park path.
Ashikaga Flower Park is known for its 150-some year old wisteria tree. Of course, it is not blooming in the winter, but they apparently decorate the park with millions of LED lights and put on a walking show. An American on the tour complained that she wished that there was something like this here in the US, and a bunch of us hopped into the chat to say that, well, depending where you live, there often is. Here in Saint Paul, there's something like this (for driving through) in the State Fair Grounds. In LaCrosse, where I grew up, there are lights put up by people like the Rotary Club for walking through (and driving through) in one of the larger parks.
There isn't, of course, anything quite like this....
Image: A truly Japanese smiling... Marigold... flotilla? (It rotated.) Those are real marigolds.
...because: Japan.
Like the tall building tour, this is one of those things I signed up for where I thought to myself, "Would I put this on my itinerary if I were in Japan right now?" and the answer is, "Probably not." YET, that's actually a big part of the appeal? These folks are going places that I probably wouldn't. They're not hitting all the spots everyone sees (maybe with the exception of Mount Fuji;) they're going places they think are appealing.
Like, Eriko brought her mom.
They both waved at us during the long goodbye (so designed so that people have time to tip) and her mom just patiently waved along, and I thought, "I suddenly love everything about this." Like, suddenly I imagined Erika being all, "Come on, Mom. It's a thing we can do together while I work!" and then Mom finding out that Erika has booked not one, but two of these--hours apart. I went on the 2 am one, and then discovered that there was another one at 5:00 am, which might have been easier to wake up to. Anyway, I wonder if Mom hung around for the second tour or if she bailed and took the train back to wherever home is. The other thing is that while it was pretty, the whole park had a very Disney vibe going on that... I'm not sure I always find attractive? Like, it can feel over the top.
\Image: Gaudy or fun or gaudy AND fun.... you decide!
The thing that is kind of cool about Ashikaga Flower Park is that a section of it was built on a wetland, so there are these kind of bog walks around reflectively clear pools of water. Erika gave us some information about how much charcoal was used to filter the water, but kind of tuned her out because it sounded a bit like environmental destruction to me and I didn't want to be THAT person on this tour, especially without coffee (and plus, what do I know?) There was something about moving the wisteria tree too that kind of made my head hurt, but, again, it was two o'clock in the morning. With all the technical glitches, I'm not even entirely sure what all was said.
The funny part was that when I got up for the second time that morning, I started to show Shawn the pictures from this trip and she spotted that a tour happening right then of the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton, UK. She'd been wanting to see how the tours worked, so I pressed the go and off we went, following our insanely knowledgeable--could've passed for David Attenborough--tour guide named Ian.
Image: Rollright Standing Stone Circle, Little Rollright, UK.
Some of the stones in this collection are older than Stonehenge. Ian walked us between a collection of three standing stones, the Whispering Knights, the King's Stone, and the King's Soldiers' Circle (which is the picture above.)
Image: Whispering Knights standing stones.
In one day, I travelled 9,482 km, between Asikaga, Japan and Rollright, UK... and was live at each. This is the power of the internet, my friends. Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.
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