Day 2

Lindsey's Version

After waking up in the pink koala room (highly recommend it) we were off to an early start. Only bad part about the koala room was that the air conditioning turned off at 2 am. We cranked it as high as it goes and were fine. We both slept pretty well considering the jet lag, so can't complain.

We wanted to get out to Fuji Safari Park, which is about 2 hours (give or take) from Tokyo. In order to catch a 9:10 bus in a city called Mismima, we needed to get out of our train station by 7:30ish. The sad part about this was that we missed having a buffet with koala pancakes! :-(

The good news is that there was a bakery in the train area where we picked 3 items. We had NO CLUE what we were getting. Luckily - we were 3 for 3, yay! One was a long stick-like bread item that wound up essentially being a pig in a blanket, the next was a bread with custard it in (tasted like a donut without the fried part so was even more delicious) and then a ham and cream cheese pasty. We ate these on the train, which was pretty easy. We took the bullet train through the countryside and made it to Mismima with time to spare. We then went to the bus counter to get our ticket and the lady told us, "no bus today". I think that Dave feared for the woman's life after my reaction. She told us to go to another train station and another bus which would have taken us another 2 hours. We decided to cab it instead, and ~$50 later, we got to the Safari Park at 10 am.

We were literally the only non-Japanese people there until we saw a Caucasian couple way later in the day. They didn't speak a ton of English there, but we seemed to be ok getting around. The first order of business was to cuddle with a lion cub! We went to the baby lion area and bought a ticket for 600 Yen (~$5) and waited in line for about 30 minutes. Then it was our turn and then put a towel down and then hand you a lion cub!!! It was pretty tiny (probably Snicky size), but built really sturdy. Weirdly, it wasn't very soft. It made a few cute little sounds and kicked its legs around, but then posed nicely for the picture. I can't figure out how to get the pictures off our camera (so glad that we have it!), so will need to post later.

After the lion, we walked down the path and saw a few baby tigers and a few more lions, and then got to the petting area. At the kangaroo area, there were some silver bowls out with food pellets and a box that said 50 yen. Everyone paid their money (no supervision that people paid!) and grabbed a bowl and went in to feed the kangaroos. Naturally, we made quite a few friends. There was one giant, fat one that really liked the treats, so you could see how he got so big. Next were the carybaras. Dave liked them because they were Rodents of Unusual Size (ROUS). We fed them some apples and they were very friendly and let us pet them and hug them. They also weren't very soft, but pretty cute. There were also these other little guys in there that looked like a cross between a capybara and a chinchilla. Dave says they're called a mara.

Next we went and looked at the other animals, such as cheetahs, rhinos and hyenas. We got to pet/feed miniature horses (they were so tiny - probably the size of a large dog) and they put a little mini carriage on them to give kids a ride. There were a ton of school kids there, all color coded with different hats. They were all probably 3-5ish. It was odd because most of them had both their mom and dad in attendance. After that, we found some wallabies to feed as well as some squirrel monkeys. They were really tiny and really quick. I bought some sunflower seeds to feed them and it was a riot. Their little hands popped out and they snatched them up really fast! We also fed some wallabies (helped one of them get back into its cage) and then saw the all important guinea pig exhibit. Because what zoo is complete without guinea pigs?

We wound up skipping the dog house, the cat house and the rabbit house, as those would have been an extra 500 yen each. We're pretty sure Munchie was one of the dogs in there - looked just like her. At this point, we decided to grab some lunch. The outside area was swarming with kids, but we grabbed some food from the row of food vendors. There were a few restaurants (and a place where kids can bake bread into cute shapes like bears, lions), but we opted to eat outside. We got some type of bowl of fried goodness (fries, chicken and onion rings) and what Dave thought was a pizza hot dog. Let's just say that the Japanese have AWFUL tomato sauce, so it was not very good! Also, in other bad news, I discovered at this time that I cracked my cell phone. Praying that it holds us the rest of the trip!

After lunch, we rented out the safari jeep so that we could drive through the safari area. They also have buses that you can take, but Dave wanted the Jurassic Park experience. After trying to explain to us in Japanese what was going on, we took off and went to the Safari Area. It was like Jurassic Park. There were huge gates with guard towers that opened and closed the gates, so it was pretty amazing. The first area was Bears, and there were brown and black ones, We saw that the bus stopped to feed them and the bear were on two legs getting food from the bus with a tong. It was crazy. Next were lions. There must have been 30 lions. At one point we saw two males trying to fight each other, and the rangers went to break them up in their safari Jeep. The lions were literally walking next to our car or crossing the road. It was surreal. Next came the tigers and cheetahs, followed by the elephants. They built this huge tank for the elephants to swim in, but no one was swimming. Next were the giraffes. The gave us some leaves to feed them so we pulled over and a giraffe came up to the car. It stuck its head next to the barred window and stuck out its long, blue tongue wanting food. I gave it some leaves, which it gobbled up. It then decided that our car was tasty and started to lick the windshield (and slobber all over it), and then the roof of the car. We were kind of stuck until it was done since we couldn't see where its head was!

After escaping the giraffe, we saw zebras, camels, reindeer, bison and deer-type animals. They had given us some cookies for the "muffilins", which we had no clue what they were. There were some off-road areas for safari vehicles and we turned down one and saw this giant ram. Dave and I looked at each other and said, "It that a muffilin"? Well, it took one look at us, and started toward the car and then stood on two feet at the window begging. Guess we found the muffilin! They were really aggressive and thought that that bars on our window were real tasty. It also took a while to pry ourselves away to not run one over.

We finished up the drive and it was time to go. A bus came to the park at 3ish, so we jumped on and started our long trip home because this way didn't have a bullet train. After a few hours of bus/train, we made it to the right station which is semi-near our new hotel - Sheraton Mikayo Tokyo. We saw an ad in the train station for Aqua Park, which I thought was something I saw online regarding art with aquariums. We went through the station, which was hopping with thousands of people, and got to aqua park. It turned out it was a large aquarium. The second floor of the building, which also was a hotel, had huge tanks and even a stadium with a dolphin pool. The size was just crazy. They had some giant manta rays and lots of sharks and cool fish. It was an interesting stumble upon.

Once done, we had to get to the hotel. It was about 2km away, give or take, and we decided to walk instead of taking a cab. This was a bad idea. On the walk, there was a group of maybe 6-8 men walking while chanting and playing some instruments. One of them chimed in every 10-15 seconds and sounded like a fire alarm that has a low battery. Anyhow, Google Maps took us through a weird residential area. In any other city, it would have been terrifying walking through alleys in the dark. But it's Japan, so it was fine and it was a ritzy area. All of the garages don't have doors on them because no one is bothering anyone's stuff and we saw a covered up Ferrari. We walked up and down huge hills and finally re-found the main area. We were able to hear our beeping fire alarm, so that made us feel better.

We finally got to the hotel (after Dave found a vending machine with Mountain Dew - the first he's seen here) and checked in. There was nothing around, so we grabbed dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was ok, but nothing great, and expensive with small portions. Then we came back and crashed! We both woke up at about 5:30, which was probably good because there was an earthquake at 5:50 am that shook the whole hotel. It was pretty crazy since we're not used to earthquakes.

Anyhow, going to get off and running - will write about Day 3 later and get some pictures posted!