the zoo!

So this morning we somehow managed to get up and ready by 10am. Mrs. Watanabe made us some breakfast, and then we went to meet with Carrie and Lorianne at the Kuuneru Taniguchi mini-hotel. Carrie brought five bundles of Udon from her islands, where it's the specialty. I gave a bundle to Mama, and she started crying. She wished us happiness and we promised to come back to Kamikawa. I'm gonna miss her crazy antics. As we waited for the train, in a moment of idiocy, I had my picture taken posing like the bear statue in front of the station.

We said farewell to the hotel staff and caught the train to Asahikawa, then off to the zoo we went! 旭山動物園 Asahiyama Zoo is well known as the most progressive zoo in Japan. Their exhibits are well designed, taking advantage of the animals' natural habits to maximise visitor's chance of seeing them active. The penguin house, polar bear house and seal house are especially well done. The penguin exhibit has an underwater tunnel where the penguins swim over your head and around the tunnel walls. The seal exhibit has a giant vertical tube where the seals swim up and down inside right in front of you.

And on top of that, they have mechanical pandas that you can ride. I don't know if that's considered progressive, though. Notice the kid on the left gawking at us. We must have taken 4 or 5 pictures of us each on this panda, and she just stared through the whole thing.

In a moment of randomness, a dragonfly decided to land on Carrie's head.

In another unrelated moment of randomness, we had our pictures taken as seals.

In yet another totally unrelated moment of idiocy/randomness, we caught a picture of James standing behind the security guard on duty. Notice his hat: "Very Work Japan". The guy had no idea his picture was being taken. When he looked at me I pretended I was taking a picture of the mountains behind him.

So we were waiting by the bus shelter for the bus. When we had arrived, there were about 10 people or so. We waited with our heavy luggage (3 cases) and tried to get on 2 wrong buses that were going elsewhere, while the shelter filled up more and more with people until there was about 30 or 40 people waiting for this bus. Finally the right bus pulled up, and we tried to get on. Suddenly, angry shouts from the bus shelter mob, as a whole bunch of old folks pushed us out of the way and get on the bus. Apparantly there was a lineup. A secret lineup that we didn't know about. And the old folks pulled the "top of the Japanese societal totem pole" trick to push us out of the way and board first. That's all well and good, they're older, they need to sit, but we'd been standing around for 40 minutes with our heavy bags. (Later Anyram suggested that I use the gaijin "Nihongo tabemasen" trick, pretend we don't understand and board anyway, but I guess that might be bad if we incur the wrath of 30+ old ladies. Who knows what could happen?)

We decided to ditch the bus and take a nice, air-conditioned, fast cab. We passed the bus on the way over to Asahikawa Station, too. Hahahaa. Stupid bus.

We returned back to the station and walked to the Isis & Osiris イシス&オシリス Egyptian restaurant in Asahikawa, but the mamasan was out shopping :( So we went next door for okonomiyaki. I had yakisoba wrapped in an omelette. Mmmmmmmmm. Carrie and Lorianne had a Hokkaido style okonomiyaki each (the standard cabbage with pieces of potato, corn and bacon), and James had a pork meatball one. When we finished our dinner, Isis & Osiris was open, so we introduced everybody and then went back to Sapporo for a very welcome sleep.