some singing lessons today, so we were going to leave the house to him. When we told him we were going round to Mari’s today to see the kitten, he said he’d love to see it too. I called Keiko to see what she was up to today because Jun said she wasn’t working. She said she was going to the Zoo today with Nobuko, and invited us to go along too. The kids were happy as they love spending time with Nobuko. So we all ended up at Mari’s and after a while fawning over the kitten, we left for the Zoo. (photo: Mari and her cat Ashibe)
The Tama Zoo is out in the hills outside of Tokyo, almost an hour by train, and more interestingly Monorail. I hadn’t ridden on the Monorail in Japan before so I was looking forward to it. It’s quite a way up off the ground and so gives a bit o
f a different perspective and also great views of the countryside.The Zoo itself is quite hilly and very leafy but nothing extraordinary as Zoo’s go. We did have fun riding on the ‘Lion Bus’ through the Lion enclosure. They were all resting, but we got quite close up. It was a strange feeling hopping onto the reinforced bus through a special enclosed area
with huge iron bars. Reminded me a lot of the scene in Jurassic Park when it all went wrong!The other interesting part was the Chimpanzee enclosure. There were a couple of babies there which were having a great time roughhousing. More interestingly though, was the fact that there was a vending machine inside their enclosure. The photos showed that the Chimps are given coins at certain times of the days, then use the coins to buy a can of vegetable juice and then put the cans in the bins provided! So Japanese…vending
machines even for the animals to use!Which reminds me, while we were at the monorail station, the kids were getting a cold drink from the vending machine when they saw a bottle of ‘hot jelly’ in the machine. We’d already seen cold jelly bottles, but this was the first time we saw a bottle of hot jelly. Keiko and Nobuko had never tried it, so we decided to share one and see what it would be like. I have to say it was revolting. It reminded me of kids parties, where the jelly is left out in the sun for too long. Also, it had a strange after taste, but the kids didn’t seem to mind it.
At the end of the day, we called Mari and invited her to dinner at the l
ocal Nepalese restaurant. Dinner was very nice as were the owners of the restaurant. Jun came over and after we had finished the kids and I went home and played ‘blackjack’ again (we are going to have to learn a new game!).
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