Golden Week

Howdy, everyone! How's everybody doing? I'm doing just fine myself, thank you. Now, on to business:

Last week was Golden Week, a period of four holidays in a row during which many Japanese leave their homes and go on a short vacation. Tokyo pretty much empties of people as everyone flocks to the countryside to enjoy spring, the south to party at the beach, or to Tokyo Disney, which is notoriously crowded during Golden Week.


Since I still have a long list of places to visit in Tokyo (and little cash left), I stayed in the city. Mina also happened to be in town at the time for a club of hers. She had all of Monday completely free, so we decided to go to the zoo.






As did the rest of Tokyo.

Monday was May 4, which happens to be Midori no Hi, or Greenery Day, and on this day all the zoos are free of charge. So the Ueno zoo, the largest and oldest zoo in Tokyo, was PACKED with grandparents, parents, and small children. Mina and I were probably the only people between the ages of 10 and 30 in the whole park. Normally, I'm not that fond of children, but Japanese kids are about as cute as kids can get, especially when they chase ducks around, as they did near the zoo's pagoda.

I don't really know why, but they had this giant string of fish kites/flags strung up near the entrance, and I thought it was cool.















We were really surprised to see this guy: an American Buffalo. A lot of people were looking at him and taking his picture. Mina and I couldn't believe how massive his head was! It's a bit difficult to get a sense of scale in this photo, but there were some wild pigs in the enclosure with him, and they weren't as big as his head.

I was excited to get to see an aardvark, or ant eater. I had never seen one before. He just kept pacing in front of the grate of his enclosure, giving everyone a good look. Mina and I noticed that he seemed to be walking on his knuckles, kind of like an ape.

We were at the zoo for maybe an hour and a half before wading through the throng just became too tiresome, so we missed some of the big cats and arctic animals. But all in all, it was a nice zoo. For some reason, they had the kangaroo situated in the Africa area, but I'll forgive them.

If you ever decide to visit Ueno Zoo, take this advice: pony up the $6 and go on any day BUT Greenery Day. And don't be shy about taking a picture with the super cute panda statue- Mina wasn't!