Yoyogi Park is one of Japan’s most frequented recreational parks and sits next to the famous Meiji Shrine in the Shibuya region of Tokyo. As an environmental, eco-friendly volunteer event for Team Japan, we visited the grounds for a park cleanup session. The initial plan was to pick up trash and debris from the floor and picnic areas, but the staff of Yoyogi Park and the very conscious visitors of Yoyogi Park left us with nothing to clean! We were given a new task the day before our volunteer day – to pick up large branches and sticks in preparation of the oncoming typhoon which was scheduled to hit Tokyo the day after. We had ourselves quite the time in the summer heat, hoisting bags of heavy branches and donning our gloves and mega tongs. At the end, we felt we accomplished two major goals – to help preserve the beauty of Japan’s national park and to exercise more!
