Last Wednesday was a Japanese holiday. Some weird one like "Culture Day”. Anyway, I had the day off of work. I decided to something interesting and figure out what Japanese people do on culture day, so I borrowed my friends bike and decided to just ride around to experience Japanese culture. There is a river (Nogawa River) not far from my house, and that river has many parks along it so I figured it was the perfect place to go to see Japanese culture. I left the house at around 2pm, and as soon as I got to the park I saw lots of families out having a picnic or BBQ or just out having fun. There is a bike path along Nogawa river and having nothing else to do figured that biking along the path would be the best way to see what Japanese life is really like… away from all the major train stations and people. I also have somewhat of a love for biking probably from all the times I used to go to the bike path at the beach in CA. What other way can you really go far distances while being outside in the open air and being able to look at everything around you? After biking along the river for about an hour or two, I saw a batting center (バッティングセンター) and decided to try out how good my batting skills were after not playing baseball for an incredibly long time. To my surprise the 100 km/h was no problem for me. It got a little harder when I tried the 120 km/h and 130 km/h ones, but overall was happy with my performance. I made some friends with some Japanese people there who were impressed with my performance, and enjoyed practicing their English with me. Upon leaving the center I decided to look at a map to actually find out where I was. I realized that I was halfway to the Tamagawa river. The Tamagawa river is a fairly large river that runs south of Tokyo. Although it was a far way until the Nogawa river met the Tamgawa river, and the people at the batting center said I was insane, I decided to make a goal to reach the point where the two rivers met. A long time later, as it was getting dark, I finally made it! After a beautiful day biking, looking at Japanese culture, and batting I finished it off by relaxing at Tamagawa. When it was too dark to see anymore, I turned around and biked back home.

Nogawa River, right before it meets the Tamagawa.

It seems that this place is very famous amoung the Japanese to come, relax, and watch the sunset.

The meeting of the two rivers.