31 October 2016
Captives
Visiting the Sapporo zoo on a rainy day
Warmer today, could be as warm as 8C, wheres my shorts? Warmer however means rain. And it rained. And it rained some more all day.
The rain was not too much of a problem, because today is a rest day after yesterdays effort anyway, but I did get wet, and cold, and wet feet. I am not wearing my boots today because they are drying from yesterday, so my only other pair of shoes provide no protection from water ingress. No IP rating at all.
This means I have been squelching around in saturated socks for hours. Fun times.
I ventured along the park, to the main temple, which is better forgotten as its tiny and boring. In fine weather, I would have climbed the hill behind it, which seems to have more colorful leaves than a person could handle without dying from amazement. Even in the rain people were standing around taking leaf photos, collecting leaves, smelling leaves, tasting leaves, sneaking up on leaves to surprise them and offering leaves congratulations on making it off the tree.
Near by, is the zoo. Zoos can be terrible. I googled this one. Reviews were ok, more important than that, entrance fee, $5. Time to get wet and look at monkeys.
In the Japanese zoo tradition, it was 2/3 under redevelopment, forever. They wont redevelop it, they will just redevelop the redevelopment sign and scaffolding pretending to be redeveloping something behind it that has crumbled.
What was left was quite small, but they do have polar bears. They also had a Hokkaido brown bear, sleeping in a hole. He was massive, as big as a grizzly bear. I dont want to ever see one again.
I exited my hotel to be greeted by proper rain, now what.
First I appreciated some recycling stations for fluro tubes and printer cartridges. Cause I am working today. OK work completed.
This is a snow melting machine, for your home. You plug this in, and presumably stick a hose down your drain onto the bottom of it, then shovel snow into it. I am going to become the sole Australian distributor, PROFIT AWAITS.
This is the softbank mascot dog, you see him everywhere. Note he has a small dog on his head. I suspect they are preparing for the station cat situation.
Station cat is (was) a famous cat appointed head of a train station somewhere down south. He died of old age after approximately 9 million photos of him wearing a stationmaster hat.
By this time they had rebuilt the station around station cat, to be completely station cat themed. So when he died they had to make up some bullshit story about how station cat had a few years prior appointed an apprentice, and then they brought out a new cat they found going through the garbage a week prior.
Softbank are hoping to prevent this debacle by appointing the apprentice mascot before the original dies.
I dont know what this building is, but it has a large elaborate garden.
Note they tie all the trees and shrubs up in twine. I dont know why. Do they put plastic covers over them? I have seen some pine trees with wicker basket style covers over them already.
Pick a box.
Time for a few more leaves.
This is the main shrine of all of Hokkaido, or it claims to be. It looks small and boring.
The path to the main shrine is past peak leafery.
OK, I dont need to see Japanese monkeys in a zoo, I can see them in the wild.
So I looked at this Heyena instead. Lots of the photos show animals indoors in small areas. They can generally go outside if they wish, into larger green areas. But they are choosing to stay indoors near the heater. Even hippos, lions, deer, all of them want to be inside.
Snow leopard. Most of the time it was just me, and they followed me around.
Big tiger seemed to enjoy my company.
The lesser panda. They had heaps of these, they are a dime a dozen.
Dusty lizard.
Polar bears are the main attraction here. There was at least one other one, and he was taking flying leaps into a pool to fetch his plastic ball. Unfortunately I could not photograph that because he was behind a series of fences and grills. Japan hates you to get a good view remember.
Here is the city ski jump. Sapporo has actually been awarded the winter olympics twice, in 1940 and 1972. They did not get to host them in 1940 though, they decided to team up with Hitler to fight the world because they didnt like the dominance of power of one ethnic group in Hollywood.
The walk back had more leaves than you can shake a stick at. See what I did there?
If you are having a heart attack or the earths atmosphere is suddenly removed, go to this floor.
This is more China than Japan. Look at the light fittings, they have plastic bags meticulously attached under them. At the low point of each bag, is a tube, high quality work here. The tubes are then connected via a series of junctions into a bucket. All to collect water from the leaking roof.
I am sure it would have taken someone hours to rig all this up.