Lamberts Do Japan: My Life at a Park

Obviously, with two little boys we are at the park...a lot. Like multiple times a day. Tokyo parks are interesting -- it seems like every major neighborhood has one big-ish park, but when you walk around enough, you'll start finding these little neighborhood urban "parks" or simply fenced-in play areas for kids. Usually these play areas have at least a slide and a few swings, maybe a small jungle gym of some sort. Many of them also have "sand" boxes, except for the "sand" is really just this dark brownish/gray dirt, which as you can imagine just makes a huge mess and sticks to the boys' skin. And, naturally, the boys love them. Most of the time, I don't care -- I just let them get dirty. Again, I'm pretty much always going to give in if they are not whining. :-)

Also, at a few of the parks, they have these cool slides that are on rollers -- they should have more of them in the U.S. -- they're great for young kids who don't really know how to slide fast yet. There is one that goes all the way down this small hill at a park in Roppongi, called "Robot Park" for all the robot-themed equipment. That's a favorite of the boys of course. They can go down that slide about 30 times in a row and not get sick of it. Every time they go down it, they have to huff it up that hill again, which is funny to watch, but they do it nonetheless!