March of the Penguins

Hey readers! Sorry about the lengthy pause; I've been quite busy applying for various honor societies/programs/grants at CMU. I've also ended my creative writing hiatus. Yay for being productive!

On the second day of our vacation in Hokkaido, my friends and I took advantage of the free transportation provided by our travel agency to go to the Asahiyama Zoo.

Asahiyama is the most popular zoo in Japan. It is known for the diversity of their animals, which come from as far as Africa and as close as the surrounding mountains, and the design of their enclosures and attractions, which allow visitors to get a closer view than is normal for zoos.

But Asahiyama is probably most famous for its "march of the penguins". A couple times a day, all the visitors in the park line up along a marked path around the edge of the zoo to see a half-dozen zookeepers herding a dozen or so penguins along in the snow. My friends and I arrived at the zoo just before the procession began, so it was the first thing we got to see.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime up close and personal moment with the penguins, especially this little guy, who insisted on investigating the crowd every few meters.

Probably my favorite animal in the zoo was this red panda. I had not known before that there was a different variety of panda, but there you have it! It actually looks nothing like the Chinese panda, but to me, resembles a raccoon or tanuki. I wasn't able to get any pictures of them, but there were three babies sleeping high up on platforms and in trees. 超かわいい！

I was also very excited to finally get to see a tanuki and Japanese Macaque, or snow monkey. In high school, my friends and I founded a manga/Japanese culture club, and we chose Tanuki as our mascot. Though a real animal, in Japan, Tanuki is revered as a spirit of fertility. And I had been waiting to see Japanese snow monkies since I had first learned about them on some national geographic show a long time ago. Natives of Hokkaido, Japanese macaques spend a great deal of their time relaxing in the region's hot springs. I generally don't like monkies, but I wouldn't mind being one if it meant lazing around in an onsen all day!

There were also a few animals from Africa, like this lion. To be honest, seeing him in the snow made me kind of sad; he seemed restless and spent a lot of time just standing on this thin piece of plywood the zookeepers had placed next to the window; he would stand there and roar. I don't think he was very happy in the snow.








This giraffe, however, looked perfectly happy. For the first three minutes we watched him, he was licking up snow on top of a box. The rhino waltzed right up and gave us some really great shots, as well.

I also got to watch the seal being fed. He was rather reluctant to come out onto the ice, but he did get half-way out.

The trip from Sapporo to the zoo was three hours each way- it was an entire day of just animals! When we returned to the city, we found a restaurant that specialized in soup curry, a delicious hybrid of curry and stew, served here with rice and chai tea. Hokkaido is a really great place to find deliciously spicy food!