Higashiyama Zoo (Sunday)

[jinian]

Oh, hey, I kinda disappeared, sorry. I did not get eaten by the zoo animals at this time. I did see bikers on Big Wheels (motor-tricycles anyway), and I did go the wrong way:



I still don't know how it happened, but I went behind that tennis center and got nowhere and turned, and then there was a whole lot of nothing. There was a guy walking down the other side of the street at one point who looked like a fifty-year-old from a rock band, and he had a dog who was clearly some mutt, not a canonical Japanese dog (usually a little Shiba Inu, sometimes dachshunds, always tidy). I liked them both immediately.

I didn't think I would ever see this in Japan:



But there was wildlife!







I walked over a very large hill on that unmaintained sidewalk and wound up in Kitaotsubo, which I had not heard of before. Oops. To do: get a map of the entire city, not just part of it. I turned left and walked some more, and got to Uedayama, which I had also not heard of. There was an option to go left again, back over the mountain, but I went forward some more in my dead-reckoning way, and triumphed -- eventually I hit a T-junction, but with the chance to walk through a forested bit, and after that I saw a parking sign for Higashiyama something and started hearing loudspeaker announcements.

Lots of people with kids were around, always a good sign of a zoo, and I even got valuable information from one of the kids. He went up to a shrub and picked some inconspicuous flowers, then smelled them as he carried them off. I sniffed carefully and found that they were the source of the mysterious, wonderful tropical-fruit smell that I keep detecting in random places around the city. Once I knew what the bush looked like, I found out they're usually white, but these were orange:



Now I just have to figure out what their name is.

When I arrived I was very puzzled that I didn't have to pay -- this happened several times during the day, and later I found out that everything was free due to the Nagoya City Festival. Score. I walked into this:



It is, unfortunately, an old-school zoo. None of the animals really had enough space to be happy, and some of them were clearly messed up and pacing freakily. The babies, the birds, and the herps were all just fine, though. There was a lot to enjoy.



As always, awesome decor:







Also, the nocturnal habitat for Rattus norvegicus was a faux sewer, which cracked me up.

Unfortunately the kana here do not read "NEVER DO THIS":



But the pygmy hippos were awfully cute in their dangerous way:



The authentic experience of being in the koala house in Japan, minus the squealing:



I think they must shampoo their koalas, as they are suspiciously fluffy and non-greasy compared to wild ones.

Unimpressed leopard gecko is unimpressed:



Adorable Ryukyu newts!



Don't hate the sailfin dragon because he is beautiful.



I was concerned about this iguana, but he was not dead. He would move and flutter his rude tongue slightly from time to time.



This is the Chinese giant salamander. He was approximately a meter long. I want him to be my friend. (There is a Japanese giant salamander tank, but no one could find him in there.)



They had great tortoises.



Medaka World! Medaka are an emerging model organism, and this exhibit showed not only fifty or so different species of Oryzias fishes in tanks but also used actual microscopes to show things like their red-stained bones and their melanophores. I was pretty impressed. This led into the rest of the aquarium section, which had scads of tiny tanks of individual species, including some pretty (and hard-to-photograph) livebearers.

Birds:




From the Americas section, where I almost didn't go because it was getting late: The best American animal.



Very properly, they had a South American tapir next to the capybara, but he was in his house. While my eye could distinguish him in the gloom, my camera could not.

The prairie dogs were extremely popular in their cuteness. I liked how they gave an alarm call when crows went overhead, myself.



Meticulous and charming concrete dinosaurs!



Adorable babies:





The fallow deer seemed fine with their enclosure, chewing cud all day. The Somali wild ass was not so happy, and I am worried about his forehead. I wish he and his stripey legs were safe in the wild, but he's not.





Too hazy and sunny for great photos from the Sky Tower, but here's one of the Botanic Gardens, where I didn't even manage to go this visit. Next time for sure!



The only reason I did not buy and eat this immediately is that the ice-cream place was closed by that time:



I did get treats outside the Sky Tower, of approximate creme brulee nature. The cream was vanilla cream like you would think, but the caramel layer was approximated by several millimeters of burnt-sugar-flavored jelly. This was delicious, and I got six for me and my roommates. They were very much appreciated, and I finally got ahead on food given! ... Until Lulu got home and handed out pieces of apple pastry from her lab's mountain-climbing expedition. Well, I still won over four of them and broke even with her, so there.