Ka-zooooo!

I decided to go to the Tama Zoo yesterday (because once again, it's admission was included in my Grutt pass!). It's a hike, about a two hour or so commute if you have a tendency to think that the Express train is more express than the Semi Special Express train (which I have now learned not to be true). There's some transferring involved and getting a bit lost within those two hours, but somehow I made it to the zoo train.

It's a train just for the zoo! Can you believe it?

I couldn't. But I enjoyed all the signs even if they were a little sun damaged.
The park is huge. They took over this giant piece of land and left many of the trees and stuff on it. It's really beautiful, even the entrance!

The inside of the zoo is HUGE. It's really hilly. There is also quite a bit of walking to get from place to place. I got a good exercise in.
I won't bore you with all the photos of animals I took, but here are some highlights!

Quail!

Hungry hungry giraffes!

Lazy kangaroos!

Snow leopard, upside down!

A tree of red panda!

Attack Yak!

The Human interaction with Peacock special exhibit

Majestic Tiger.

An Actual pack of Wolves

Pile of Snakes in a Tree.

This zoo has two really special things that make it amazing. The Tama Zoo has an extremely fantastic Insectarium. Their collection of insects is amazing. They also have an entire mega-room where you can hang out with butterflies and plants, much like the one at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.

Huge!



The rest of the facility was dedicated to other kinds of insects most of which were really scary. And extremely difficult to photograph.


The absolute best part of the entire zoo was the Lion Bus. The Lion Bus travels through the Lion Park, which is this giant hole in the ground where the lions hang out.

To make things interesting, the park officials put a bunch of pieces of meat on the side of the bus. For many waiting hungry lioness

Many of the lions were just stretched out. They are actually really cats, you know.

They also go meow-wow.

It was a fun bus-ride, the only one I've taken so far. I enjoy seeing lions in their semi-natural habitat, but as with most zoos, some of them were pretty mangy. I felt really bad for one of the elephants who was just stuck out in the sun all day with really no water and a whole bunch of giant chains that were a little too reminiscent of circus side shows to me. He didn't seem to mind too much, but then again, my elephant is a little rusty.