Sumiyoshi Park

#thingstodo This is quite simply the oldest park in Osaka, opened in the 6th year of the Meiji Era (1873). It stays busy year-round, with the Cherry Blossom Festival in spring under cherry blossoms in full bloom, the Sumiyoshi Festival (Nagoshi-ooharai-shinji) at Shimiyoshi-taisha Shrine in summer, and New Year's visits in January. The park used to be part of Sumiyoshi-taisha Shrine's facilities; it maintains the shrine's riding ground, and the Shiokake-michi that runs east to west through the center of the park was formerly the shrine's front entrance. The Takatoro in the area facing Route 26 is considered Japan's oldest lighthouse, built in the late Kamakura Period as a votive light for Sumiyoshi-taisha shrine (the current lighthouse was restored in the 49th year of the Showa Period). The ocean used to reach the west side of the park, and the landscape in front of Sumiyoshi-taisha Shrine that faced the ocean was called Sumiyoshi-moyo, the archetype of the beautiful Japanese landscape of white sand and green pines; this scenario has been described frequently in various Japanese poems. A monument inscribed with a poem composed by Basho when he visited the Shrine's Takara-no-ichi-shinji on September 13 of the 7th year of the Genroku Period (1964) stands at the east entrance of this park.