At weekends if I'm not catching up on much needed sleep from an exhausting week, I do my best to get out into a bit of nature, be it as little as a local park.

Mostly any park worth its Japanese salt (or that should be soil) has a small bamboo forest, though the thing that always confuses me is they always seem to be 立入禁止 - ENTRY PROHIBITED !

If you go outwith city limits you'll find bamboo forests but they are usual dense thickets (almost impossible to enter) with a sign saying 危ない！マ虫 !  - Danger ! Poisonous Vipers ! which would make you not want to enter.

Today near Matsudo there was one park that allowed entry to its bamboo forest and I think I know why your not allowed into them....

Managed to get a long weekend break to Mito again recently.

Last time I had been it was very brief and most of the parks were closed but it was a beautiful May long weekender so we spent the whole 3 days getting round this immense park.

I'm sure the pictures speak volumes better than I could so Click the pic to the left and have a look.

The stone shrine particularly reminds me from the end scene from Star wars...