A Swan Boat Built for Two
While in Tokyo we did any number of silly things, but this perhaps was the silliest.
We rented a swan-shaped paddle boat and coasted around the pond in Ueno park. It was fun though, and good people watching too!
Of course we splurged, paying the higher price for the swan than for the regular paddle boat or the oar boat. I mean, this may be our only chance to ride in a swan, it would have been so sad to pass it up.
As it turns out, the swan boats were really not sized appropriately for HUGE foreigners.
This was our swan.
The little guy in that pink boat was hysterical. Aaron and I took to calling him “Rambo” because he loved chasing boats around the pond and ramming into them. He, obviously, didn’t quite understand the difference between bumper cars/boats and what we were supposed to be doing.
Now that I have ridden in a swan boat once, I feel as though my dreams have been fulfilled. Dreams I didn’t even know I had. Wonder what else I can do here in Japan?
I was going to say that if you want another swan boat experience, you can get your fix in Chicago, where there’s swan boats in Lincoln Park near the zoo. However, I just read that after this summer, they’re getting rid of the 2-3 person swan boats, cleaning the pond, and then replacing them next year with perhaps larger, nature-tour like boats that they used to have way back in the day.
Larger nature-tour boats in that little pond? Seems like it could be a little, I don’t know, cramped….