Continuing from yesterday: The picture on the right is just a view of the midway area of the park. Fairly crowded, but not "I'm-going-crazy!" crowded. We left well before closing time, but it still took us about 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot. Then, after finally getting onto the road, going in what looked like the opposite direction all the other cars were going....we caught up with everyone going the same direction we were going, and sat in traffic. And sat. And sat. And . . . you get the idea. It took us about two hours to get from the park to the expressway, a distance of about ten kilometers. People were not exaggerating when they told me that Golden Week traffic was bad!
The good thing about the crazy traffic, is that I had plenty of time to look at the scenery, and to take the next two pictures (and the video I'll post a link to at the end). We were driving down the road in the town of Mito when somebody noticed a LARGE figure looming in the distance. As we got closer, as you can see in the last picture, we could see that the figure was taller than the houses surrounding it. Nobody in the car knew exactly what it was, so one of the students used her cell phone to call her mother. It turns out that the figure is a giant statue of a local Shinto god. When I got home, I got on the Internet to do
some investigating, and found a good summary of the story.As you can see in the video I'll post below, most of the people on the freeway were going to Tokyo, so after we passed that exit, the road was clear, and we had a smooth trip home from there.
Here are links to...
the story about the statue:
http://www.pref.ibaraki.jp/bukyoku/seikan/kokuko/e-ibaraki-report/0603daidarabo.html
the Disko ride in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpVIcIjf5nc
a funny children's ride and a panorama of the park:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtA0L-Ywkbo
a view of the statue and the traffic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXmHLQNGiq8
and us passing the exit to Tokyo, followed by a clear road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0AtZJwAjxI
