So. The Maruyama Zoo. The setting is beautiful; the zoo itself is nestled among a bunch of smallish mountains, near the edge of the city, in a park. There's a baseball stadium in the park and I could hear a game for most of the time we were at the zoo :) It was a nice, clear day, but it was also pretty darn chilly in the shade. I was wearing a coat and a sweater and I was cold most of the time.
Some parts of the zoo were really great. There was a joey in with the kangaroos and he was drinking milk from his mother (though sadly I think he was too big to get in her pouch). The giraffes were cute and they kept making hilarious faces as they ate. The red pandas were ridiculously adorable!
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| He never did eat that strawberry.. |
Some of the animals were being pretty lazy, probably because it was around lunchtime and some of them had clearly just eaten
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| A tiger with a small child for reference. |
The Japanese macaques were having a great time eating bugs out of each other's fur and occasionally screaming.
Canada was pretty well-represented. There were polar bears and wolves and prairie dogs and a mystery beaver who had an enclosure but who was not home while I was there.
There was a mynah bird who refused to speak for some reason, despite hoards of children (and adults) screaming "O-HAY-OOO! KON-NI-CHI-WAAAA!!!" every few seconds :p
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| One bird was in jail but the other was free in the tropical bird zone. |
There were also some FLUORESCENT flamingoes! Maybe I've just never seen flamingoes before (likely) but these guys were seriously bright.
Based on some propaganda at my friend's daughter's school, we had been led to believe that there would be some sort of an exhibit about the tapirs, but we didn't see anything special (though it's very likely that we just were unable to read the programs and figure out if / when there was some sort of a demonstration).
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| He sure was a tapir! |
The chimpanzees really stole the show. There were several young chimps who were riding around on their mothers' backs, and some wise old men-chimps who were staring at everyone (which was sort of disturbing).
Because it was Japan, there were also some intentionally and unintentionally hilarious signs.
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| I'm not sure if "buzzard" is really an ornithological term... |
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| Ok this one was clearly on purpose but we really enjoyed it (and also when we looked up there really was a monkey sitting on some mesh RIGHT above us...) |
I also learned about a hornet that I saw outside of my window the morning I went to the zoo! They kill 30-40 people a year in Japan and can cause random people to go into anaphylactic shock. I'm pretty sure this is the type of hornet that stung a friend of mine once O__O Also I am never going outside again.
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| They were no joke 3-4 cm long ;__; |
Sadly, as I mentioned in my previous post, some of the animals were in some pretty pathetically-awful cages. Considering that most of the zoo was pretty good, these were truly shocking to me. I'm really hoping that the situation for these guys is on the list of planned improvements for the zoo expansion that was under construction.
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| A mangy-lookin' raccoon with a rat tail, who was pacing back and forth frantically. |
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| This is the snow leopard who was in leopard jail, while his buddy had a huge and more appropriate enclosure right beside him. I assume that these guys take turns being on alternate sides, but this was really not great. He was also pacing angrily and people kept knocking on his glass. He made a motion like he wanted to eat a little girl at one point. |
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| I'm not sure if cement floors are a lion's natural habitat. |
In the end, as a noted hippie, I wasn't blown away by the conditions of the animals in this zoo but I was mostly not completely disgusted, either. I don't have any grand plans to go back while I'm in Sapporo but I don't feel gross for giving these folks 600¥.
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