Squirrel Park

I've written before about the small, interesting city near Utsunomiya called Moka. Its train station has an interesting, unique design, and is also one of the stops of the local steam train that operates on weekends. There's also a huge, beautiful park where we like to go walking and see the rose garden every spring. Surprisingly for a town of its size, Moka has a significant population of Japanese-Brazilian returnees, so there's some interesting cultural mixing, and a delicious Brazilian restaurant I've also mentioned before. But for a long time, Nozomi & I have thought about visiting the squirrel park. It's a kind of mini-zoo that features, yes, squirrels. For all you Oregonians, you're probably thinking, "why would you make a zoo where you can visit squirrels when you can just go to the local city park and see them jumping around wild in trees?" That would be an exellent question in Oregon, but in Japan, it's much less common to see squirrels in the wild.
Last month, on a rare weekday that both of us had off work, we visited the squirrels! And the prairie dogs, koi, chickens, ponies and ostriches. When we arrived at the park, there were only three other cars in the parking lot, so at first I thought it might be closed. We walked up to the gate, saw that it was open, and heard music playing inside (music box versions of pop songs - that got annoying after a while...) We walked past a souvenir shop. It was empty. We walked past a snack bar. It was empty. We walked past a restaurant. It was empty. We walked to the ticket counter. It was empty. It was starting to feel a bit eerie. I finally realized that on a late fall weekday, when almost all children are in school, the squirrel park is not a busy place. That actually turned out pretty nice.
We took some pictures of the statue garden, the koi swimming near the dinosaurs (well, look at the picture), and the giant squirrel mascot statue (he had a name, but we've both forgotten it). Inside the walled area with the squirrels and prairie dogs, we saw one father and daughter. They stayed about 20 more minutes after we arrived, and then exited, leaving the two of us as the only guests in the park. And the focus of the undivided attention of the squirrels and prairie dogs begging for food. They entertained us for over an hour, and then finally a staff person came into the exhibit and took our money for tickets (500 yen each). He came back later with a large bag filled with sweet potatoes, so we got a bonus!
After leaving that section, we walked to another area with the animals I mentioned above, so it was actually a fun little zoo. I normally don't include quite so many pictures in one blog post, but even after deleting several, I thought many of the remaining photos of Nozomi with the little critters were funny, so I'll just include the rest. The picture of me with the prairie dog that Nozomi took made me laugh; it looks like we are having a conversation. I really was saying hello to him, but I think he was probably just thinking, "hey, give me food!"

Fall Colors 2012

Last month, Nozomi & I went walking a couple of times in parks with beautiful fall color. Most of these pictures were taken in Utsunomiya Chuo Koen (central park). One of the times we visited, there was a chrysanthemum festival taking place, so we got a bonus range of colors added to the already amazing trees.

December Tokyo Trip

Recently I had a rare day with no teaching, so I took a quick trip to Tokyo. The first stop was Omotesando, which has one of the two Wendy's restaurants that have re-opened in Japan. (The new franchise owner says his goal is to have 200 Wendy's in Japan within 5 years, but with only 2 open in the whole country after one year in operation, I'm not holding my breath...) Anyway, the bacon cheeseburger was delicious!
I walked from there to Shibuya, and in one of the pictures, you can see the famous "busiest pedestrian intersection in the world" spot when there AREN'T so many people crossing the street. (Later in the afternoon, I crossed the street there and got a strange "swimming in a sea of people" feeling.)
My final desination was Shinjuku, which is where I took the rest of the pictures I'm sharing. As I was walking toward the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and Shinjuku Chuo Koen, I saw a man on the street with nine cats. All on leashes. And a sort of rolling cat hotel. Difficult to describe, so take a look at the pics. I stopped in my tracks as I was walking down the street, and decided it would be polite to ask the man if it was okay to take pictures before I just stated snapping photos. I asked him "shashin daijoubu?" and he said okay. After a couple of minutes, he said in English, "100 yen, cat food please!" Since I'm such a cat-lover, I couldn't say no, so I gave him a handful of change from my pocket. He counted it (about 300 yen) and said, "Oh! Thank you!" Then he bent down and said (in Japanese) to the three cats that were closest to him, "tell him thank you!" I have started to say recently, "you never know what you'll see in Tokyo..."
In the nearby park (which is probably where cat-man lives) the sun was setting, and the light made an unusual reflection on a building that is covered in what usually looks like black glass. In the late afternoon light, it made the building look almost transparent. There were still trees with beautiful fall colors, so I took a couple more photos of the building from another angle in the park.
After that, I went up to the observation deck (45th floor) of the Tokyo Metropolitan Office. You can see what the "transparent building" looks like from a completely different perspective.
I got home rather late with sore feet, but recharged creative energy...

December 1st snow

This year, the extended forecast is predicting a warmer than average winter in Japan, which mostly is fine with me, since I don't really like cold. I thought this would probably be another winter with little or no snow in Utsunomiya. For the rest of the winter, we'll have to wait and see, but for today, we got a big surprise...

Just before lunch, Nozomi & I had just finished decorating our Christmas tree. We were listening to the Christmas Swing station on internet radio and getting ready for the rest of the day. I was in the office/classroom preparing for tutoring when Nozomi shouted, "it's snowing!" I thought she was joking, but she came in the room and pointed out the window. Big, fluffy flakes were coming down pretty hard, and getting thicker as we watched even just for a few minutes. Within fifteen minutes, the ground started to have white patches, and shortly after that it got visibly brighter outside from the snow on the ground. Nozomi said she had just been thinking about snow in Hokkaido. When we put our heads outside the door on the veranda, she said, "winter smell!" It was amazingly beautiful for about an hour.

It's now sunny and all the snow has melted, but it's still quite cold outside, and the weather report says cold air from Russia is continuing to move this way...

(Video is offline.)

Thanksgiving 2012

Again this year, Nozomi & I celebrated Thanksgiving early. Because of other plans, it was even earlier than last year: November 3rd. If we keep moving it earlier each year, soon maybe we'll just celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving instead...
As usual, we went to Ichikai to share a semi-traditional dinner together with Nozomi's family. We made roasted chickens, stuffing, gravy, and pies (pecan and mincemeat). Nozomi's mother made mashed potatoes, potato salad, and cucumber/turnip pickles. So it was our usual American-Japanese fusion cooking! Oh, and I found a can of cranberry jelly at the import shop.
We combined the dinner with birthday celebrations for Nozomi's father and grandmother. Tsuru-san (grandmother) just celebrated her 100th! Congratulations!!!
Entertainment was provided by Reo/Leo, the coolest cat in the world. I finally got a picture that clearly shows his different colored eyes.