Last weekend we went to Tobu Dobutsu Koen. It is an amusement park/zoo not far from Tokyo. We actually bought the tickets to go months ago, but either the weather was bad or we were busy and so we could not go. Finally we got a day that we were free and the weather was cool, but not raining. We made the trip by car along with the Shionome sans.
The park is an interesting mix of rides and zoo animals. Here all the children are posing in front of the giant condors.
This one is a Secretary bird from Africa. They eat snakes, small animals, and insects. The children determined that this one was female because of the long eyelashes, but I have absolutely no idea how to tell them apart.
I had Kate go to the other side of the penguin pen to get a photo of the penguins and her together. She was super excited to pose for the photo as you can see.
There were animals from all over the world. White tigers, dear, American bison.....etc.. The children enjoyed seeing the variety of animals. I took the picture below just after feeding the camel carrots. Liam was funny because the camel kept looking for more food, he didn't trust it because it was checking him out and so for the picture Liam wouldn't take his eye off of the camel.
After going through the zoo portion we hit the ride area. Kate, Chizuko, and the children all got on the Music Express (At Ceder Point Ohio this was always called the Matterhorn). As a child I loved this kind of ride, but now that I am getting older my equilibrium is not as good and it only takes about 1-2 of these rides to do me in. As a result I didn't ride it.
Here is the Shionome sans on the Sky bicycle. Is was a pedal car that rode on a metal rail maybe 30 ft off the ground.
We had seen these things before in other peoples photos, but never actually seen them ourselves. In one area of the park there are a number of animals with coin slots on them. For about $2 American you get the opportunity to ride them around the park for maybe 3 minutes. In the picture it really looks fun and exciting.
This video however shows the real story. Before we put the money in the kids were really excited to try it. There was a lot of pent up excitement as they waited for the money to drop. I finally got both coins in the slot and.........well you can watch the video.
There was also a doggy ride in one of the section. It was clearly for small children, but I talked Liam into getting on it with me. I figured if I rode it with a child I wouldn't look like such an idiot. Finally that didn't help and I ended up looking a little silly. We did actually have fun on it and there were a number of Japanese people that laughed and waved at us.
The park had two coasters, one wooden and one steel. In front of the wooden coaster there were two picture boards. Taka san posed in the one as he did not go on the ride. I also stayed off of this one as I have been having a little back pain. After riding the Son of Beast wooden coaster in Kings Island Cincinnati and taking a pounding I decided it would not be the best therapy to ride a wooden coaster.
Kate posed in front of the other as she did actually ride the ride.
There were actually a pretty good variety of rides at the park, but I am sure no one is interested to see a picture book of all the rides at the park. One ride that is very common in Japan is the ferris wheel. As we have driven or travelled around Japan we have seen tons of them. This amusement park was no exception. The interesting point (and I don't know if it is typical or not) is that the wheel never stops. It moved pretty slow and we loaded into it and got out as it rolled by.
We could see the entire park from the ferris wheel as well as the surrounding city. I took a picture of the other coaster from the ferris wheel. This one I did ride as it was steel and smooth. I am actually not a big coaster fan, but I have now ridden quite a few. I checked out the big hill on this one and thought "I have ridden worse", but the first drop was pretty intense. I think the mechanism that takes you up the first hill gives a little extra push at the top and I could really feel it in my stomach.
We were able to enjoy the entire day and left just before the park closed to make the trip back home to Utsunomiya.
Recently I found a couple of new (at least to us) Kit Kat flavors.
The first is wasabi Kit Kat. The initial flavor is of chocolate which is soon replaced by the wasabi. The wasabi is not overbearing, but subtle. Definitely different.
The second was spicy pepper Kit Kat. This one also has the initial flavor of Chocolate. Actually Kate and I tried them together and at first I said to her "do you taste the pepper?" Just after I finished saying that I was hit by a little spice. The spice is not like an atomic chicken wing, but there is a little tingle of heat. I will probably never crave either one of these flavors, but they are both interesting and different than any other Kit Kat I have eaten.
That is all for this post, have a good week..
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