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Showing posts with label awesome. Show all posts

04 September 2011

don't be naughty at the zoo

When I taught kids in Vietnam, we used to sing a song called Don't be Naughty at the Zoo to help the kids learn imperatives. You can actually see a video made by a different Vietnamese English school here - skip to two minutes in, unless, like me, you melt at the sight of small school children saying Hello, my name is Linh and I am a kangaroo. As you can see, the song is pretty annoyingly catchy, even if I think most children are sensible enough to know better than to touch the bear; I could always tell when someone had had to teach that lesson, because they'd be humming the song in the staffroom all day. ANYWAY, the point is, the Mysore Zoo was clearly the inspiration for this song. Yeah, there were animals there too, but the signs were the best part.

That dead peacock is ALL YOUR FAULT.

Tigers and zebras: the world's deadliest animals. (PS, how awesome is the look of shame on the guy's face as he's being led away by the police?)

Oh god, the day monkeykind figures this one out, it's all over (insert your own Planet of the Apes joke here).

No mimicking the animals. Also, no Bluth-style chicken dancing.

My favorite animal in the zoo was actually this wild monkey baby. I think he looks so sad because he wishes he had a sign of some sort too. Or maybe the signs are really up to discourage the wild monkeys from taunting their captive monkey brethren, who knows.

06 April 2011

animal park

You know how awkward it feels when you bid goodbye to someone and then bump into them ten minutes later? That's sort of how it feels to blog about Numazu after writing my too-long and rambly goodbye post. But in any case, the weekend before our last, some of Iain's students took us out for one last excursion, to the Fuji Animal Safari Park.

The safari park is half zoo, half "safari" - in which you board one of these buses, and drive through a Jurassic park-esque safari filled with bored-looking wildlife.

On the bus, you sit safe behind the bars armed with a pair of metal tongs and a bowl of carrots and raw meat...

... so that you can FEED the lions and bears. No big deal.

You can also forgo the raw meat and the bus and drive your own car through - stopping periodically at heavily fortified gates that separate the different types of animals. Iain's students wanted to drive through twice. Though it seems like a perfect storm for a disaster, we made it through with only one tiger-induced traffic jam.

It seemed like a lot of lions for such a small place?

In the "zoo" part of the park, there was an alarmingly wide array of animals we were allowed to feed by hand. The highlights were the wallabys...

You were allowed to go INSIDE the cage. So weird, and yet, so cute.

... and also there were hungry squirrel monkeys! For 50 yen, you could feed them a handful of sunflower seeds.

Don't say you weren't warned?

There was also an area where children could ~~manhandle~~ pick up and pet guinea pigs and rabbits. Not as exciting, but it did yield a truly awesome sign.

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21 February 2011

hakone: do not touch doubtful things

After living in it's shadow for nearly a year, we (finally) went up to Hakone last weekend, whereapon we promptly realized that

a) Hakone is gorgeous, and

b) extremely easy to get to, and

c) there is a lovely and extremely reasonably priced hotel there, and

d)we are idiots for not having gone sooner, and then gone again and again throughout the year.

Good advice.

above: are those ORGANS for sale in that vending machine?

I don't know, that looks pretty doubtful to me.

Iain followed the sign's advice and did not touch any dubious things. He did, however, touch several things rather dubiously:

When Iain wasn't attracting stares by maligning innocent statues, we were having a lovely time. We stayed at a really lovely guesthouse that we both fell in love with - super friendly English speaking staff, gorgeous tatami rooms, and - best of all - a PRIVATE outdoor onsen that you can book for 30 minute slots. Having never been to an onsen before, I was particularly excited about this. Also, for the onsen-clueless, there are many helpful signs in English (and a binder's worth of information in the rooms) to help avoid onsen faux pas. For anyone in the area, I can't recommend this place more - it strikes the perfect blend of authenticity and foreigner-friendliness, which - in a country where, even after more than a year, I still stick my foot in my mouth with alarming regularity - is much appreciated.

The area around our hotel is famous for tall grass.

We also went to the coolest bar on the planet. It wasn't a bar so much it was buying a bottle of beer in your grandmother's basement (well, Grandma Tokuda's basement), with stacks of old videos, Japanese National Geographics, yellowing posters on the walls, fake flowers, doubtful things in bottles and a disproportionate amount of cat paraphernalia*. Also a gruff owner who greeted us with a single question ("Beer?"), asked Iain to point to his hometown on a map, and gave us free snacks and a shot of shochu.

The next day we went on the standard tourist circuit, which consists mostly of a gondola ride up the mountain, ostensibly to see some stunning views of Fuji-san...

... though, as you can see, our views were limited to brief flashes of fellow-gondolas, all to the sounds of a perky English and Japanese audio recording informing us that if we look to the left, we can see a spectacular view of Fuji.

Similarly, most of the attractions at the mountain top "view point" were also centered around the non-existant view. (Seriously, what IS that guy looking at?)

After our slightly disappointing gondola ride, we went on a pirate ship cruise (Why pirate ship? Who knows?) of Lake Ashi, which was beautiful, if freezing.

We ♥ Hakone.

* My grandmother would not have cat paraphernalia anywhere.

19 February 2011

Gujo Hachiman food!

The awesome thing about traveling to Gujo Hachiman with Yuka and her friends was that everything we ate was *amazing*...

Even the snacks (above, tofu with some sort of miso paste, which we ate in the freezing cold street outside the sake shop at about 11 am) were awesome.

above: tiny individual portions of wild boar nabe.

Iain bit the head off a fish.

Mochi filled with matcha green tea paste. (Iain didn't like his, so I got to have two! Bonus!)

Breakfast was almost too pretty to eat. (Almost).

For lunch on the second day, we all had huge bowls of soba...

... the biggest being the "Everest" sized portions that Satoshi and several other men ordered (and finished).

There was also a larger than usual proportion of fake food available - Gujo Hachiman is home to a factory that makes the wax food that restaurants keep in their windows. The highlight was undoubtedly this:

True story.