Animals

27 Oct 2013

Lions, Tigers, Bears… Lemurs, Tapirs, and Beetles… Oh my!

I went to the Tama Zoo with Tyler and Whitney. We took the train to Tachikawa station then took the lightrail to the zoo. I was absolutely amazed by how active the animals were.

Oh, and I had another awkward moment!

For the train, we use a Suica card. When my friend left, she gave me her Suica card because there was some money left on it. When I got on the train, I used her card… when I got off at the other station, I accidently grabbed mine and it wouldn’t let me through the gate at the other side. I knew immediately the issue, but security had already pegged me, so I had to go through and try to explain what happened any why I had two Suica cards. After about two minutes of pointing, slow hand gestures, head nods, and broken Japanese/station names, we got things figured out. Phew!

Back to the zoo…

They had a large bird area, a big bug display where I saw some bugs I never knew even existed. For example, an Orchid Mantis. A Praying Mantis that looks exactly like the bloom of an orchid. It was actually a very neat display. There was also a butterfly house. I couldn’t find the picture to upload it to the blog here but I will get it to Dropbox later, but there was a small tree with yellow chrysalises on it and it looked like Christmas ornaments. It was really pretty.

There were different continent areas in the zoo with different exhibits. It was interesting to see the size difference between the Asian elephants and the African elephants. Many of the exhibits had indoor and outdoor aspects to them so that the animals could hang out either place.

There really were some animals that I have never seen before, and even of the animals that I had seen before, I got closer than I had ever been, and I have to emphasize again that I have never seen animals so active in a zoo ever before. Some of the videos I got will definitely show you that.

For the lion tour, I think they put meat on the side of the bus because almost every bus that came by, a female lion would run over and start licking the windows. With the cheetah, it was right by feeding time… that may explain most of that activity… The snow leopards were hilarious to watch. They must have been siblings or at least grown up together. They would be on two different sides of the enclosure, mean-mugging the heck out of each other (staring each other down), and then run/pounce. It was like watching two oversized house cats playing. It was almost more fun to watch the Japanese people react to them :)

At one point we felt like an exhibit. It was quite comical… There was a little Japanese kiddo in a stroller who must have been two or so heading in the opposite direction. He pointed, went “Ooooooo” and started waving. We may have been the first white people he’s ever seen! Haha.

My favorite part of the zoo was the red panda. We didn’t make it to the actual pandas… the zoo was closing. We spent all day there but didn’t quite make it all the way around. Missed Australia and all of Asia. Still, it is a very impressive zoo.

Back in Fussa later that night, we went to the Truck Stop for dinner. Us Americans on base affectionately refer to it as the Truck Stop because we have no idea what the actual name of it is, and there are usually a lot of trucks parked outside of it. I had crab fried rice and dumplings. It was delicious.

Also, I must say, these pictures were an absolute pain to place... This is not a user friendly template at all... so what you see is what you get. :p