Moerenuma Park was designed by the architect Isamu Noguchi. The whole site, including the glass pyramid, is a work of art. We visited there on the last day of our Hokkaido trip.
It took 1 hour bus ride from Sapporo city center to the park, and when the bus reached the stop at the park west entrance, we were the only passengers. We basically had the whole park to ourselves except few locals exercising.
 |
| West Entrance to Moerenumma Park |
The center of the park is wide open, with a couple hills which have simple clean profiles
The large sculptures dotted the park are simple, abstract and elegant.
A stainless tetrahedral truss structure stands out in the green landscape, like an alien object. It is over a grassy mound, and next to a performance platform. It is intriguing. The reflective stainless steel contrasts with the surrounding nature, alien, an accentuation of the landscape.
This is Tetra Mound, 13 meters in height, the truss is 2 meter in diameter.
 |
| Tetra Mound |
Climbing on to the play mountain by the Tetra Mound, looking around, a white sculpture, like a cut open fruit caught our eyes. It resembles
the split apple in New Zealand. The color contrast of the white sculpture, green grasses, and dark green trees, are sharp, and soothing.
It is The Music Shell, a unique outdoor performance space. Situated directly at the base of the granite slope of Play Mountain, it serves as a functional art piece where nature and music merge.
 |
| Music shell |
There are a few other functional art work in the park at the playground area, such as the conical shaped slide in the Cherry forest, and the glass pyramid.
 |
| slides |
The glass pyramid reminded us of the glass pyramid outside
the Louvre. This glass pyramid is a quiet shelter by Mount Moere. It is also a gallery with photographs showing the 4 seasons at the park, and a museum of
the architect Isamu Noguchi. The platform on the rooftop provides views of the whole park, the moat surrounded the park, the downtown Sapporo, and snow covered mountains in the distance. |
| The river southwest of the park, serves as a boundary of the park |
 |
| The moat |
After the glass pyramid, we walked up the Mt Moere - in fact a hill. Two straight stairs, one curved stairs lead to the mountain top. Look up or look down, the views are clean, and profiles are simple.
As we completed the loop around the park, we came across another large open area, with wall at the far side, and a paved trail along the wall. There are trees by the wall, on the other side of the wall from our viewpoint. Outside the wall there are several fields including a baseball field.
It was a tranquil place, the tranquility was broken occasionally by bird chirping in the woods, and overhead in the sky.
Entering the park, we saw many large birds flying overhead, black wings, sometimes showing brown feathers - obviously some species of hawks - they are black kites (Hawks - new bird species to me, #208 on my list)). They flew confidently, steadily, scanning the landscape beneath them.
In contrast, there were light colored large birds flying closer to the river water - grey herons. They fly calmly and elegantly barely flapping their wings.
Note; there were a least one black kite couple, and one pair of grey herons.
The big birds don't chirp or make calls frequently. The smaller birds, sparrows, magpies, brown eared bulbuls ..., they sing, chirp tirelessly.
In the cherry forest, while enjoying the blooming cherry blossoms, I heard bird chirps and saw a medium size dark color bird hopping around, pecking at cherry blossoms. After a few tries, I finally capture the bird on camera - it was a brown eared bulbul, a new species on my list (#209)
Walking up the Mt Moere, I heard a pleasant bird song, repeating intermittently, looking around, I did not locate any birds, finally I saw a bird with black head, white collar, and white breast, and a tint of brown throat - it is Siberian Stonechat (#210)!
No comments:
Post a Comment