"Life is park!" proclaims Brutus magazine.

The English isn't good but the sentiment is. A veritable parkland is Japan. Wikipedia lists 34 national and 56 quasi-national parks. With these Brutus is not concerned. It celebrates the less imposing municipal park, which may be as spacious as Tokyo's Yoyogi Park (541,000 square meters), or no larger than your backyard. Is size everything?

It's nothing. Quality is all, and what's quality? Where one person sees flowers, another sees weeds. One person's birdsong is another's noise. There are parks you can spend an entire day in, walking, cycling, jogging, hardly aware that you're covering the same ground over and over. Flush with excitement at discovering the sheer beauty of nothing in particular, you bring a friend next time, who sees ... nothing in particular. It's chilling, but that's life.