The Elevated Park at the Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
I’ve been going through my pictures from our time living in Japan two years ago, and I realized there’s a lot of good stuff I never had a chance to blog about. Time permitting, I’ll have some more posts coming up about our time in Japan.
 A rose garden in the park at the Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
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 The Shibuara Water Reclamation Center
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When we lived in Shinagawa, we were just a few blocks away from the Shibaura Water Reclamation Center (click to see a great aerial shot, featuring their cartoon mascot; yes, even public works facilities in Japan get cartoon mascots). Less euphemistically, it’s a sewage treatment plant. Luckily, because of the prevailing winds, we rarely smelled it (the neighborhood just north of us – near the Tamachi station – typically got the worst of its fragrances). We walked by it almost every day, and something we never noticed during our first few months living there is that it’s home to a good-sized park. The reason we didn’t notice is because the park is entirely above ground. From the street level, we saw a ramp that we just assumed went to an elevated parking area. But it’s actually a park with plenty of green grass and trees, supported by a a whole lot of concrete pillars.
It’s a truly remarkable use of an urban space that otherwise certainly would not be visited by anyone other than the plant’s employees. It has large green spaces for picnics and throwing frisbees, tennis courts, a rose garden, and several play structures and swing sets for the kids. Once we finally discovered it, Eidan and I went there several times. After you enter the park, there is no indication you’re on top of an enormous sewage treatment facility, at least as long as the winds are favorable. All along the edge of the park are tall, densely packed shrubs, hiding the vast swath of blue treatment tanks that lie beyond (to take the picture of them you see above, I had to push myself behind the shrubs and position my camera carefully through the chain link fence).
One time I went around to the main business entrance for the plant, with Eidan on the stroller. There was a small, attractive picnic area with a small koi pond right inside the open gate, so we strolled in. From there I could see an entrance to the facility itself, with several informative signs visible just beyond it, so I figured I could go in for a self-guided tour. I did, and learned a lot about sewage treatment as I stopped by each big piece of equipment doing its thing, and read its sign (all the signs were written in Japanese and English). But halfway through I ended up at the rear entrance, which was locked and had guards posted. It dawned on me at that point that I probably shouldn’t be there, so I quietly made my way back out to the main entrance with Eidan.
Directions: unless you have a real thing for neighborhood parks or sewage treatment plants it’s not really worth a special trip, but if you’re already near the Shinagawa station and you want to check it out, see the directions at the very bottom of Shibaura Water Reclamation Center web page. Or just look for Shinagawa’s most recognizable building – the NTT DoCoMo building. Coming from the Shinagawa station, the park is just past the building.
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Some great informative writing, RSS Subscribed