交通公園 Kotsu-Koen (Traffic Parks) are a fun, free place for kids to learn the rules of the road in Japan.
The traffic parks are mini recreations of Japanese roads, complete with traffic lights, signs, and even friendly oji-sans (male elders / Grandpas) to help kids along the way.
Do the kids actually learn the traffic rules well? Well, if you watched the video, I’d say their on-course following of the rules was questionable.
Do the kids have fun? Unquestionably.
Someone asked where to find these parks. If you google 交通公園 which is Kotsu-Koen (Traffic Park) and the name of the city/area in Japan you’re visiting, you may have some luck. I googled 交通公園東京 (Kotsu-koen Tokyo) and this was the top result was this. If you follow the link, it’ll have a Google Map of the traffic parks found within Tokyo, and the blog post talks about them (it’s in Japanese though, but Google Translate is your friend).
Do you have traffic parks where you’re from?
Comments
7 responses to “LWIF EP23: How Japanese Kids Learn to “Drive””
Nathaniel Kinning
Hello, my name is Nathaniel. I live in the state of Michigan in the U.S. There are no traffic parks that I have seen on my travels over the country. I do however, believe that Japan’s way of introducing young children to the rules of the road and driving are very neat.
I don’t know how much the kids take away from it in terms of following road rules, but I don’t think it hurts 😉 The kids always have fun though. – The Dad
Sonia
Hi!
I’m from Spain and we have nothing like that, although it seems to be a quite fun! Here people use the car a lot, so children ussualy learn just from that or their parents explain to them (which is not even half as fun as that park!). Then, when you want to get the drinving license you have to go to a drinving school, but that’s for grown-ups.
I think it’s a grat idea having a park for that, I wish we had them in Spain too!
Sonia
Ok, doing some internet research, seems like we do have these parks in Spain, just they are quite new and not very popular yet (because most people don’t know they exist)
Oh, that’s good to hear that there are traffic parks in Spain as well! – The Dad
Annemarie
There’s a traffic park in Holland, too! It looks the same. But here we have pedal cars, instead of bicycles and go-karts, that look like real cars and for example ambulances and roadside assistance. And there are gas stations along the roads. There are also helicopters, boats and a monorail and the children can get a “driving license” 🙂
Comments
7 responses to “LWIF EP23: How Japanese Kids Learn to “Drive””
Hello, my name is Nathaniel. I live in the state of Michigan in the U.S. There are no traffic parks that I have seen on my travels over the country. I do however, believe that Japan’s way of introducing young children to the rules of the road and driving are very neat.
I don’t know how much the kids take away from it in terms of following road rules, but I don’t think it hurts 😉 The kids always have fun though. – The Dad
Hi!
I’m from Spain and we have nothing like that, although it seems to be a quite fun! Here people use the car a lot, so children ussualy learn just from that or their parents explain to them (which is not even half as fun as that park!). Then, when you want to get the drinving license you have to go to a drinving school, but that’s for grown-ups.
I think it’s a grat idea having a park for that, I wish we had them in Spain too!
Ok, doing some internet research, seems like we do have these parks in Spain, just they are quite new and not very popular yet (because most people don’t know they exist)
Oh, that’s good to hear that there are traffic parks in Spain as well! – The Dad
There’s a traffic park in Holland, too! It looks the same. But here we have pedal cars, instead of bicycles and go-karts, that look like real cars and for example ambulances and roadside assistance. And there are gas stations along the roads. There are also helicopters, boats and a monorail and the children can get a “driving license” 🙂
That’s neat that they have an assortment of specialty vehicles as well. – The Dad