Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Feeling Old?


Hanako
This is for several of my good friends had birthdays recently.  You know who you are. 

On my recent visit to the Kichijoji area I took a walk one day through Inokashira Park.  There is a zoo inside the park that I had heard about, and since I had never been to a zoo in Japan, I thought I'd take a look. This zoo is small and rather old fashioned. The star of the zoo is the lady pictured above, Hanako the Elephant.  I read some of the literature about the zoo and found that she was born in Thailand and came to the Ueno Zoo when she was two years old, in 1949. Well, guess what, she's the same age as I am! Looking at her I had very mixed feelings. 

You can see more pictures from Kitchijoji and Inokashira in the slide show running to the right. If you click on the slide it will take you to the album where you can see the pictures and captions individually.

I got a little surprise when I came upon the fellow in the picture here.  The sign said he and his mate were from America and that they are Capybara.  For some unknown reason I had a mental image of a capybara being about the size of a cat. Well I was wrong.  These guys were as big as hogs. Not really exuding much charm either.

2 comments:

Julie Fukuda said...

Thanks a bunch. I know I'm getting wrinkly and broad in the beam but.... The bigie is that I got a smart phone from my husband and it is way smarter than I. I still can't figure out the stuff I could do on my old dumb one! Ueno zoo used to be a lot like that one but they have done marvelous things with their displays.We should go there.

Georgia said...

Julie, Julie, Julie you are only one of my friends with a recent birthday, there are several others, I really felt the need to share the joy.

Ah yes, a smart phone. He could have just done something dumb like clean his stuff up around the house and say that was your present.

Yes, I would like to see a more modern zoo. Let's go!

Have fun at Yokohama on the 10th!