A bright and sunny day inspired us to get out and do some walking around Yokosuka. Most of our ventures in Yokosuka have just been up and down the street leading to the train station. Today, we decided to walk around closer to the base and check out Mikasa Park. We can actually see the park from base when we run each morning. I didn’t even use Google Map to get there and it was only about a mile from the Commissary (on base grocery store). The park was named and established as a memorial to the Battleship Mikasa. The ship was built for the Imperial Japanese in the late 1890s and used as the flag-ship in the Russo-Japanese War between 1904-1905. Ironically, the ship survived the war but sank after a magazine exploded. It was salvaged and took two years to restore. After restoration, it was used for coastal defense in World War I. The ship was finally decommissioned in 1922 and made into a memorial and museum.
A statue of Admiral Togo Heihachiro, the fleet admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, is also in the park.
From Mikasa park, Monkey Island or Sarushima can be viewed in the distance. The island is only accessible by a 10-minute ferry ride. Do not be fooled by the name, there are NO monkeys on Monkey Island. We saved that exploration for another day!
From Mikasa Park, you can see across the harbor to the Naval Station. In this picture you can see several high rise towers, part of Navy Housing, in the background as well as the main base gym (building with arched roof).
Also in Mikasa Park was a train. I couldn’t find too much information about it and what I did find was in Japanese. Not so helpful. In the land where train riding is second nature it seems logical to have a train set in a scenic and natural setting.
The measurements are all I can understand.