{"id":96,"date":"2005-05-06T07:28:41","date_gmt":"2005-05-06T07:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wheresdrew.com\/blog\/?p=96"},"modified":"2006-05-04T17:15:58","modified_gmt":"2006-05-04T08:15:58","slug":"now-i-know-why-the-parks-here-have-no-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/2005\/05\/06\/now-i-know-why-the-parks-here-have-no-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Now I know why the parks here have no grass."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s this old bugger’s fault.<\/p>\n


\n“Parks without grass?!?” you say. Yes, I say. I don’t know if this trend is common in other Asian countries, but it seems damned near epidemic in Japan. Don’t think I’m going to start ragging on the park system here, because I’m not. What parks there are here are nice.<\/p>\n

But they’d be even nicer if they had some frickin’ grass.<\/b><\/p>\n

When somebody says the word “park” you probably think of open spaces with lots of green grass, perfect for picnics or playing. I know I do. But the Japanese don’t. Some of the parks here do have wide open spaces, to be sure.<\/p>\n

It’s just that they’re dirt instead of grass.<\/b><\/p>\n

I’d always thought it was an overuse issue. So many people going to the same parks must prevent much grass from growing. A sad state, but I understood how it could happen. Granted, in the US, they’d just rope off that section of the park, toss a bunch of grass seed down, cover it with hay and let nature run its course. But that’s in America, and it’s not the Japanese way. What’s the Japanese way?<\/p>\n

If any grass grows, you rip it out of the fucking ground.<\/b><\/p>\n

Think I’m kidding? Check this guy out:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This is the little park across the street from my apartment. I saw this guy out there as I left for work a couple days ago. It looked like he was weeding the small grassy area, and I thought that was cool. Odds are he’s retired and needs something to keep him busy. Good for him!<\/p>\n

Only that’s not what he was doing.<\/b><\/p>\n

That photo is from two days after the first time I saw him out there “weeding.” He was systematically ripping out anything green and growing from this end of the park. Why? Damned if I know, but there he was doing it.<\/p>\n

I can’t say for sure if this is what’s going on at other parks (Yoyogi has some really bad dirt patches), but it might be. And if it is, then what?<\/p>\n

Hell if I know.<\/b><\/p>\n

I may have found the source of the problem, but I’ll leave it to somebody else to find the solution, okay?<\/p>\n

^.^<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s this old bugger’s fault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wheresdrew.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}