Kumamoto Zoo and Botanical Gardens

So as I mentioned before, one of the only things open to do in Kumamoto was go to the zoo, which was conveniently located on the tram line. Despite my standard inability to get out of the house before three, we managed to get there before lunchtime.

For cats, tail up = happy. For lemurs, hard to say.

Number of fucks this hippo gives: zero. The hippo's name is Momoko, and because I have two students named Momoko, I happen to know that it means "peach flower." Good name for a giant ugly crotchety animal.

Ed and Momoko are bros. This was taken before we learned the hippo was a chick.

Rhinos have big square heads.

I was trying to head butt the rhino.

One of my students this year looked like a capybara.

Really, she looked remarkably like this picture. I wish I could show you.

For lunch we found a fast food joint that had this sinister ET with chibi-Pooh. Chibi is an art style used in anime and manga that depicts characters as small and cute. Nice juxtaposition here.

Also, this:

I see Apple has made its way to the zoo.

This is me being very excited about the snow leopard. It was very cute.

Nothing like the back of a lion.

Here's a bear. I felt pretty bad for it. Of all the animals in pretty small cages, this one seemed the most distraught about it.

Also, it seemed that there had been another bear who had died. People had left flowers and some honey in memoriam.

Momoko, continuing to give zero fucks.

In the zoo, it is unacceptable to climb fences and stick your tongue out at the animals. You must stand away from the fence, holding your hands placidly behind your back. B-boy style acceptable.

Swan babies are called cygnets. I had forgotten that. The cygnets of black and white swans look similar, I think.

This animal is BORING. Unacceptable.

It is also unacceptable to kick cans at the bears, for they will cry, get wounded, and sprout wings and a fluffy tail.

We kept seeing these smoking stands with poetry on them. It's hard to know if it was intended as poetry in Japanese, though.

This guy.

I think this is one of the many types of pheasants. That's crazy man.

If you feed a pony, your finger will explode and you will cry. Your pigtails will try to escape your head. The sight of candy in a plastic bag will cause the bear's stomach to emit radio waves, which will embarrass the bear.

There was a petting zoo in the zoo. As a result, I got to pet this pony.

They also whipped out a bunch of guinea pigs for little children to pet. I was offered a try, but I'm not that into guinea pigs. They just fearfully say "weet weet" and poop on you. Hence the little white towels on the children's laps.

This is the Friendship Pavilion, for some reason.

Here I am shaking hands at the Friendship Pavilion. That's how you make friends.

After that, we wandered around the botanical gardens for a while. Outside, there were some fruit-bearing trees, and I picked a kumquat offa one, even though I figured you probably weren't supposed to do that. But when I ate it it tasted really bad, so I spat it out on the ground. Ed seemed to think that whole series of actions was very American.

Then we went into this building and looked at some photographs of the zoo and walked around the greenhouse for a bit. There was a waterfall.

Then I took some selfies and Ed was very surprised.

He photobombed me once.

Then there was this tree.

Then I kept trying to take some more selfies in front of these cool leaves, but I kept doing it too fast, and they all came out a blur of plant art, so then I took this sad selfie, but it doesn't look particularly sad, because I was in a hurry and I didn't have time to make it look sincere.

Cac and balls, HA HA HA.

I forget what the premise of this photo was, but it turned out nicely.

This is a view of everything we saw, from above.

We seriously almost left the zoo without seeing some important animals. The Ape House was disguised as a restroom and nursing area, so we didn't realize that if you went up the outdoor stairs and followed a path of painted footprints, you could actually see some apes. The chimps seemed kind of listless, though, and we didn't see their feeding show or whatever because we didn't want to wait around.

I don't really like banana that much, but I like it as a topping on cereal or ice cream.

We had seen the flamingos from afar, but it was through the ape house that we were able to get up close and take pictures.

Then we passed Momoko again, giving perhaps one fuck.

Then we started talking about Thundercats.

Then we saw the penguins before we left. We had tried to find them before, but their habitat was cleverly hidden.

Suddenly, a penguin shot out a nice stream of piss, and I took a picture of it dissipating in the water.

These penguins seem very happy, but they might not really be happy.

The End.