April 23, 2000

Igashira Park Birding Center

On Easter Sunday we drove out to nearby Igashira Park, located in the city of Moka* , about sixty miles north of Tokyo in Tochigi Prefecture. We had a couple dozen brightly dyed, cracked Easter eggs, several packages of candies and snacks, three children, and of course–having missed the Mt. Fuji photo op the day before–our digital camera.

We were instantly rewarded for our foresight by stormclouds and nothing even faintly picturesque on the drive to the park. As we passed the bright blue sound truck run by the local right-wing fanatics, a spectacular weeping cherry tree presented itself for viewing. The road leading up to the park was lined with bright pink botan cherries and elderly berry farmers selling fresh strawberries from roadside stalls.

Igashira Park is a multi-use complex that includes a waterpark run only during the five-week summer vacation, a hot springs complex, a bike rental shop, and a five-acre lake with a wharf for paddleboats. At the southern end of the lake stands a two-story building that houses a restaurant and a bird observation center. This is a commonsense setup where the restaurant concession pays for the birding center upstairs.

No sooner had the eggs been hidden in the woods than the downpour let loose, dampening the enthusiasm of the adults but whipping the children into a frenzy. The only thing more fun than smushed eggs is smushed, muddy ones. We retreated into the bird observation center and left the kids to hunt wet eggs in the woods.

The Igashira Park bird center answers a question that our clients ask us all the time: Why would anyone want to visit here? In the minds of small communities looking for alternate sources of revenue with which to revitalize their economies, the words "nature facility" seem to conjure up images of the Grand Canyon, of Yosemite, of Yellowstone, of lions hunting zebras on the Serengeti Plain. Time and time again Fermata works with small communities all over the world that cannot believe their own natural resources would attract tourists.

In point of fact, the opposite is true. Consider Major League Baseball, which represents the apotheosis of the sport, and Little League, the community-level, grass-roots organization that gets children interested in baseball to begin with. The same relationship applies to the heavy-duty, world-class nature parks. They induce nature tourists to travel from distant locations only because their appetite was first whetted in smaller, less dramatic environments.

The center at Igashira Park is a wonderful example of grass-roots nature conservancy, awareness, and business. Geared towards children who come to the park with their parents, the walls are covered with children’s drawings of birds. These pictures are done from a blank generic bird outline printed on a piece of paper. Stimulated by the birds viewed through the spotting scopes or by the laminated photographs of on-site birds, children begin honing the first and most important nature-appreciation skill of all: the skill of observation.

The center had mounted high quality spotting scopes along a glass wall that gave a complete view of the lake. We peered through the nearest one and were able to catch a rare glimpse of the Muddy-backed Rock-Chuker, which bore a suspicious resemblance to the youngest child in our group, who was apparently bored with the egg search and had switched to tossing stones into the lake.

The center had an avi-library, recent issues of National Geographic, a birdwatching/conservation video, and detailed information about the park’s migrant ducks as well as daily species counts and total population. Several years earlier we had seen Baikal Teal at this site, a bird whose population is declining rapidly and whose sighting is a thrill for even an experienced birder.

Yet the park illustrated some of the basic problems that all communities dealing with nature tourism must confront. As a rule, Japanese infrastructure, whether in the form of facilities, roads or power lines, tends to have the aesthetic appeal of gravel. Function doesn’t simply dictate form, it ignores everything else. Thus the paddleboat wharf not only uglified the lake, but brought people close enough to the reedy northern end of the lake to disturb some of the less gregarious bird species.

Another problem apparent at the park, and one that exposed a deeper conflict, was the obvious conflict between the park’s desire to make money and its desire to protect resident and migratory species. Construction work designed to increase park access to the lakeside at the expense of existing vegetation indicated that the dominant ethic was not one of conservation but one of profit.

That said, how many multi-use parks in the U.S. have birding facilities, where nature enthusiasm is taught alongside waterslides and go-cart tracks? That the facility exists at all is a tribute to at least a nascent conservation ethic. You could even argue that the park’s regular birder seminars, permanent interpreting staff and activities suggest that it’s not simply nascent, but developed and competing hard with the traditional attraction-based tourism that it shares space with.

Attraction-based tourism! The tourism of the unreal and the fake…Watching children lined up on the specially built feeding dock as they fed breadcrumbs to the resident Spot-billed Ducks was all the proof we needed that Nature attracts. The fascination of children for living, responding, independent organisms is so deeply connected within their–and our–psyches that the comparable reaction to attraction-based tourism is a barbarously bad joke. Watch the face of a child waiting in line at Disneyland, or the frenetic screams and distorted faces of children as they are slammed at high speeds down fake waterfalls in fake plastic canoes. Which attraction is teaching children to respond to the real? Which teaches them to respond to the synthetic? Whatever its flaws, Igashira Park represents the Fermata ethic as it slowly, steadily, grooms parents and children to pay attention to the real, natural world in which they live.

Access to Igashira Park:

From Tokyo

By car Japanese/English The English site is a totally worthless one maintained by the highway department that gives no useful information whatsoever about fees or the layout of the expressway network. But it’s all there is…The Japanese language site* does give a map, but you’ve got click around to find it, and if you can’t read Japanese it’s useless when you do.

Take the Tohoku Expressway north to the Kanuma Exit, about one hour from the point where the Shuto Expressway ends and the Tohoku Expressway begins. Exit the expressway at Kanuma and head straight along the major thoroughfare into which the exit merges. Its name is Kanuma Inta-Dori and take it due east into the city of Utsunomiya. After about six kilometers you will pass under the shinkansen tracks and cross Highway 4. If you keep going straight the road narrows into two lanes and, after about five more kilometers eventually runs into a T-intersection. Turn right. At the next light turn left, and after about 800 meters you will cross the bridge that spans the Kinugawa river. At the next light, which is Highway 408, turn right. Follow this road for the next four kilometers, but do not veer off to the right at the intersection where 408 splits off. On the left there is a Family Mart convenience store. Continue straight, and turn left at the second traffic signal after the Family Mart. After about two kilometers you will come to another traffic light. Turn left. There’s a big billboard for an optician on your right. This road curves around and takes you directly to the park entrance. Parking is on your left.

By Train Japanese/English This is the JR East Railways site, and lists Shinkansen fares. Schedules are only available if you can read and write Japanese; it’s basically a worthless site for the English-only user. Your best bet is to get a train schedule in English at Narita Airport when you enter the country or from one of the information desks at Ueno or Tokyo Stations.

From Tokyo

There is not good direct access from Tokyo, but you can take either the Tohoku Shinkansen or the JR Tohoku Line from Ueno Station, get off in Oyama and transfer to the Mito Line. Take the Mito Line to Shimodate Station and change again to the Moka Line. It’s the sixth stop. Estimated travel time by train is at least three hours.

Trip du Jour, April 23, 2000
Igashira Park Birding Center
by Seth Davidson

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