Saved from the Golf Courses? Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest 南本宿市民の森

Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest viewed from Kirigasaku 桐が作

Yokohama has several big golf courses, such as the prestigious Hodogaya Country Club 程ヶ谷カントリー・クラブ. Actually, the campus of Yokohama National University 横浜国立大学 was a golf course for grandees of Japanese military before the World War II, and then the playground for the officers of American Occupation Force, including General Douglas MacArthur. The biggest of the golf courses in Yokohama are Yokohama Country Club 横浜カントリー・クラブ and Totsuka Country Club 戸塚カントリー・クラブ spreading side-by-side over a large chunk of land from 3 Wards, Asahi 旭 , Hodogaya 保土ヶ谷, and Totsuka 戸塚. As they are private properties, they are not accessible unless you pay millions of yen to be a member of the Club (and love artificial ponds, bunkers and vegetation). Luckily, just next to these two golf courses, we have 2 large public parks, one of which is Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest 南本宿市民の森 (map here).

Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest is next to Yokohama Natural Park for Kids 横浜こども自然公園 (aka the Big-Pond Park 大池公園). It is a park frequented by local elementary schools for physical, art, and scientific curriculums. If you know somebody who attended schools in Yokohama, it is quite likely that s/he says “Oh, yeah, we’ve been there several times,” or “we had a school picnic over there.” If that person belonged to Boy/Girl Scouts in Yokohama, they may have been regulars to the Park for their weekend sessions.

Well-manicured Kids’ Park

As the Kids’ Park is prepared for kids to enjoy, it has amenities, like well-equipped toilets, large parking space (with fee), a baseball field, a BBQ field, a small animal garden, and even ice cream vending machines. If you have babies who need a buggy, this is the place to spend your weekend. East of the Kids’ Park is Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest so that to go there we first find the Kids’ Park. In contrast to the Park, the Forest is, though a way smaller than the Kids Park, for somebody who can walk up steep hills and long steps.

The nearest stations to the place are on Sotetsu Line 相鉄線. One of them is Futamatagawa Station 二俣川. We exit from the South Entrance of the Station, then, simply go straight along Natural Park Street. Passing Kentucky Fried Chicken, Mister Donuts, Starbucks, and Futamatagawa Catholic Church (that is an established institution in Yokohama) on the left, going through an ordinary residential area of detached houses, at the bottom of the slope we can find the main entrance of the Kids’ Park. It is about 20 minutes’ walk for 1^st or 2^nd graders. Before the Kids’ Park, there are one supermarket (Seiyu owned by Walmart), one convenience store (Seven Eleven), and one take-out bentoh shop so that we can procure foods very easily before reaching to the Forest. Another route is from Minami Makigahara Station 南万騎が原 which is the station next to Futamatagawa. From the East Exit of Minami Makigahara Station to the Kids’ Park is about 10 minutes’ walk through a residential town. Finding an entrance to the Kids’ Park from Minami Makigahara route could be tricky, and end up with the main entrance by walking around the Park. Unless you come from the City of Fujisawa 藤沢市, considering the time to wait at Futamatagawa Station for a regular service train to Minami Makigahara, it might be economical to use Futamatagawa Station, as local schools with budget and time constraints do.

From the main entrance of the Kids’ Park, turn left and proceed along the outer edge of the Park. Soon, we’ll find City Office for the Park Greeneries in the West on the right. Continue walking around the Kids’ Park, there is a small crossing. Ahead of the road, you’ll see large greenery which is the northern tip of Totsuka Country Club. Small paved road to the right is another entrance for the Kids’ Park. (If you can read Japanese, there is a tiny monument explaining it was an important crossroad leading to Kamakura since Middle Ages until the late 1970s.) Here, we turn left and go into a narrow and winding road through a community of modern farm houses surrounded by small vegetable fields. We imagine it would be a remnant of Satoyama community. The road ends at a T crossing with a similarly narrow winding road. We turn right here, and keep walking until we meet a public toilet on the left. This is the toilet for Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest.

City Office

Remnants of Satoyama?

Traditional way of celebrating healthy growth of kids near Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest

Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest Toilet

Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest occupies the area of 6.3 ha, in the east of the Kids’ Park, and on the north of Totsuka and Yokohama Country Clubs. It became Citizen Forest in September 1996, i.e. after the burst of the Japanese bubble, which means many people then began to realize developing golf courses were not so clever move for the bottom line. The Forest is well cared. The toilet has standard facility for Citizen Forest so that it’s clean but no soap (and Japanese style toilet bowl only). It is funny to find a notice on the wall; “Please do not use this water faucet for washing your car.” Well, somebody may have tried here to economize his/her water bill.

In front of the toilet there is a tiny parking space, perhaps for 2 or 3 cars, with a signboard saying that the space is “For visitors to the Shintoh Shrine only.” It’s up to you how to interpret it. In any case, finding this way by car would be difficult if you are not used to narrow winding traditional Japanese road. Sure enough, on the right of the toilet, there are steep steps which bring us to a small Shintoh shrine. It is Johda Shrine上田神社, a very very small shrine standing next to a huge gingko tree. According to Kanagawa Shrine Agency website, its origin is unknown, but a fairly old forest village shrine. Simply put, Japanese Shintoism is animism that finds gods everywhere. Japanese have been thinking there is something spiritual in forest, made it an object to worship, and built a shrine within it, as here. The village shrine forests have been revered for generations and some of the original vegetation are preserved. In front of the Johda Shrine, there is a big camellia tree. It is registered by the City of Yokohama as a special wild tree. Back of the shrine is a small precipice, and at the right bottom of it, there also is a small spring.

Welcome to Johda Shrine

Johda Shrine

Gingko tree

Believe it or not, it is camellia.

A spring. I don’t recommend you to drink it, though.

Springs are something lovely we find in the forests of Yokohama. Yokohama actually has lots of small springs coming out of many crevices of land, sometimes even at the top of a hill. Often they are very discreet small ponds with clear water continuously pouring out in a quiet forest. Some become an origin of a river, or reach to a larger pond nearby probably through underground water way. I guess water from this small spring of Johda Shrine is going to the big pond of the Kids’ Park, and / or to Futamatagawa (“Futamtata River” which means “a river at a cross road”). Probably, ancient people of Satoyama built this shrine because there is a spring. The small monuments on both sides of the steps to the shrine tell us people felt something special at this place … Ghost? Spirit? … and thought it was necessary to placate them in some way or another. … Does the ghost of Minami Honjuku Forest think golf courses OK?

Oh Ghost,

please be kind to us …

Actually, this place is a territory of her.

From the Shrine, on the right, there is a sign saying “Komorebino Hiroba (こもれびの広場 An open space with sunshine filtering through foliage), this way.” Climbing up the steep steps, and we find ourselves on the ridgeline. The Forest is very well kept with some landscaping along the way. Although the area of the Forest is not tiny, the only allowed routes for the strollers are the main ridgeline and 4 slopes from two valley sides. The entire length of the route would be about 1 km so that it’s not that substantial. Both sides of the route changes its scenery with seasonal flowers from camellia, plum, cherry blossoms, wisteria … The only tricky part is its steep slopes to reach to the top.

Sign to Komorebino Hiroba

We have to climb this steepness.

Inside the Forest along the route, there are 5 maps like this.

There are 5 picnic areas.

Sign posts are also clearly shown.

South slope up to the ridgeline. This road is wilder than that from the Shrine.

The west side of the hill mainly consists of planted coniferous trees, giving us calm, a kind of meditative air. The east side is of broadleaf trees including cherry, plum, and wisteria. The Forests gives the visitors the delight of fresh colors for the season. I visited the Minami Honjuku Forest during early summer when the broadleaf trees presented us green so refreshing. Unlike the neighboring parks of the Minami Honjuku Forest, the place is not for the people who wanted to do something else, like golfing or baseball. We can come here simply to breath phytonzid. We sit on a bench in the forest calmly and meditate the joy of being in the forest. The birds are chirping, and a magnificent butterfly passes by in front of you.

I think somebody’s doing landscaping here.

For you having a will to walk further, you can take a narrow pedestrian road running between the Country Clubs and the Kids’ Park / Citizen Forest which is a partof Green Road for visiting parks in Asahi Ward あさひグリーンロード公園めぐりコース. The rout itself is not congested so that we can have a relaxing day of enjoying forest (large and small) in the middle of Yokohama.

A part of Green Road leading to Minami Honjuku Citizen Forest

If you find a problem in the Park, please make a contact with

Office for the Park Greeneries in the North 北部公園緑地事務所

Yokohama Municipal Government Creative Environment Policy Bureau 横浜市環境創造局

Phone: 045-311-2016 (I guess in Japanese only)

FAX: 045-316-8420 (I hope there is somebody who can read English …)