I came across another excellent pedestrian path in the neighborhood of the Meguro River headwaters in Setagaya ku. Its name is “Karasuyama Kawa Midori Chi” (Crow Mountain River Green Space), and I learned a lot about this route and its cousin, the Kitazawa River Green Space, which I described in the very first post to this blog--before I knew it had a name! I found out how nice the Karasuyama path is when I went “off piste”last Sunday Apr 4, having turned south after Yamashita Koen. I have updated the Hachimanyama Station post's slide show with the route in full blossom as well so check it out below (see "A Great Route to Try for the New Year" posted in January 2009). You can click on the title of this post to get a look at what I am talking about today.
The Karasuyama River path is on average wider than the Kitazawa River path, with a little less shade cover and landscaping in sections but may offer more to those that want to run fast. I was able to find toilets and drinking fountains at my leisure and enjoyed 2 hours of sometimes intense running in warm weather, never buying a drink.
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When creating the map for this run I decided to combine the Karasuyama route with the Hachimanyama (Kitazawa) route because they join together near Ikejiri Ohashi and they run roughly parallel with a similar length. How come? According to an explanation I found on a sign along the course, both the Kitazawa and Karasuyama waterways were allowed to take water from the Tamagawa Josui (see my February post), so they both began at points along the original Tamagawa Josui. This license to extract water for drinking and irrigation was granted during the Edo period by the Shogun’s government. There was a change to this from the Taisho period and then the construction of the path over the river (which is no longer used as drinking water), was begun in the Showa period. In fact, the waters that you see flowing as a small decorative stream is supplied by pipe from a water treatment source near Shinjuku. As my source for this information was the sign along the route, please forgive any factual errors.
I suggest that first timers follow the route by going upstream via the Kitazawa River path (keep to the right from Ikejiri Ohashi), through Umegaoka and toward Hachimanyama Station. Study the map carefully in the neighborhood of Hachimanyama as you are on residential roads with few obvious landmarks. I have identified what I think is the most straightforward route but you could miss the left turn for the road that heads for the beginning of the Karasuyama path. If that happens, keep heading west and you will either come across the Karasuyama path, or hit Route 311 (Kanpachi Dori), in either case, head left. The Karasuyama River path is easy to recognize. If you have joined it not at the very end, you are probably very near to its entrance anyway. There is a large botanical garden on the other side of Route 311 if you have the time to explore it before heading back. The Karasuyama River path will be difficult to follow only at Kibogaoka Park. Keep left but only to the next traffic light and the route is on the right and connected to Kibogaoka Park. After this it is hard to get lost heading back. I hope you enjoy this route as much as I do!
