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Published: July 26th 2010
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My mother was particularly keen on Asahiyama Zoo. She begged me to include the zoo and go there on a sunny day. The sunny weather came back on Friday, 21 May. We caught the limited express, Super Kamui at 8:34. The express train ran through the rural area where the farmers had planted rice plants. I had printed the bus timetable for Asahiyama zoo from the Internet. After arriving at Asahikawa station, we walked to the bus terminal 5. There was a long queue for the line for Asahiyama zoo, which has become one of the most popular zoos in Japan. We got on one of the local buses and it brought us to the zoo at 11 o'clock.
Mark picked up the English map. We left my parents at the entrance. We started exploring the Penguins and Polar Bear's house. There were three or four types of penguins, e.g. emperor penguin, Humbolat penguin, and they were either walking on the land or swimming at a relatively slow pace. There were a lot of visitors in the Polar Bear's House. We saw three or four polar bears. As expected, they were very big and were moving swiftly. we saw them
swimming in the water and running on the land at the basement, ground, 1st and 2nd floor.
Afterwards, we walked to the East gate. We saw a couple of lesser pandas walking across the suspension bridge connecting from one tree to the other, looked at a couple of ezosika (deer), and went through the tunnel, which was meant to be the hide of the Hokkaido's wolves. We didn't see any of them from the viewing screens.
We were to meet up with my parents at East Gate at 12:30 to have lunch at the Mog-mog restaurant. The East Gate was situated on top of the hill and we could overlook the zoo and surrounding countryside. My father dislikes climbing up the steps and kept moaning about the lack of facilities at Asahiyama Zoo.
The restaurant offered good selection of meals cooked with the local ingredients and the original spices and we enjoyed having the lunch in the balcony overlooking countryside.
"Mog-mog" is the expressive word which describes how humans and animals bite food in Japanese. Asahiyama Zoo uses the word for the animals' feeding time.
After having wonderful lunch, we had gone back to the
zoo again. We saw spider monkeys, emus, giraffes, pelicans, etc and explored chimpanzees, orangutan houses and monkey mountains. Monkeys were extremely agile and lively, and they frequently jumped and ran through the gymnastic area with columns, ropes and seemed to be talking to their other mates all the time.
There were a series of hutches where Hokkaido's animals, e.g. kita kitsune (fox), white rabbits, white owls, woodpeckers, were kept. Hokkaido possesses a large acrage of open land and countryside, and it is usual for anybody to spot wild animals at the close distance, e.g. middle of the road. I learnt from the information boards that many of Hokkaido's animals were rescued ones and keepers have been working hard for them to return to the wild.
We couldn't see any traces of wolves in the morning, but we saw a couple of them sitting in the sun in the afternoon.
Next, we headed for Seal's House. There were quite a few seals swimming and we were able to see them in the water tank and cylinder shaped tank, which was connected from the main tank. They were swimming very fast and it was hard to take photos.
There
was a house where fierce animals such as Amur tigers, leopards, grizzly bears, were kept. They looked comfortable and contened in a reasonable sized space for them to move about.
I read the information about Amur Tiger. It said that Amur Tiger is the biggest tiger in the world, but the population has been decreased for the past 100 years. They were considered to be the most dangerous animal and they were continuously killed in the past. In those days, hunters have stopped killing them, as Amur Tiger has become a rare and valuable beast. However, there has been a large number of trees cut down in the Siberian forest recently and it has made it even more difficult for them to live in their homeland.
Hokkaido has been the home for grizzly bears. For a long time, the Ainu people had treated the bear as a sacred animal. The majority of them live in north east of Hokkaido, e.g. Shiretoko peninsula's woodland. There were a couple of grizzly bears in Asahiyama zoo. As expected, they were big, active, and moving dynamically. They were playing with the water in the warm afternoon on 21 May.
We finally rambled
through the aviary and reached the main gate.
Japan's northernmost zoo was once forced to close when it was found that some animals had caught Echinococus and this event caused a severe negative impact for the zoo and its reputation in the mid 1990s. The Vets and keepers have been working very hard and they have been organising a wide range of programmes e.g. feeding programmes, exercise sessions for animals to attract visitors and families with children. There were a lot of animals who live in the cold climate in the Asahiyama zoo and we enjoyed looking at them. We met up with my parents at 4 o'clock at the main gate and caught the bus and express train back to Sapporo.
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