Kashiwanoha Park, Urban park in Kashiwa City, Japan.
Kashiwanoha Park is a prefectural urban park in Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, managed by the Kashiwanoha Park Management Group. Its grounds hold lawns, groves of many tree species, flower beds, a boat pond with a rest house, a rose garden, a Japanese garden called Makinohara-en with the Shohakutei tea house, and sports facilities including an athletics stadium, baseball ground, tennis courts and a community gymnasium.
The site was the former Kashiwanoha airfield of the Imperial Japanese Army's Eastern 105th Unit, where the Shusui rocket fighter was stationed. After the war it was requisitioned as the US military's Kashiwa Communication Station. Under a 1981 memorandum between the government, Chiba Prefecture and Kashiwa City, the land was developed: part for the University of Tokyo's Kashiwa Campus and Chiba University's farm, part as this park. The athletics stadium was completed in April 1999.
The Japanese garden, called Makinohara-en, has a tea house named Shohakutei at its centre. The park centre, community gymnasium and tea house host several dozen courses and workshops a year. In spring the Spring Festa and Children's Festival and in autumn the Flowers and Greenery Festival draw tens of thousands of visitors.
The park lies about 20 minutes on foot from Kashiwanoha Campus Station on the Tsukuba Express. Tobu buses from the west exit of Kashiwa Station, bound for the National Cancer Center or Kashiwanoha Campus Station West Exit, stop at Kashiwanoha Park Central. Two paid car parks hold 1,100 vehicles, with spaces for large vehicles and disabled drivers.
The name was coined in 1985 by Hirotaka Saito, then vice-principal of Tanaka-Kita Elementary School in Kashiwa, because the kashiwa oak keeps its old leaves through winter until new buds appear. Near the park, the gate of the former Imperial Army Eastern 105th Unit and fuel facilities for the Shusui rocket fighter still stand.
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