Day 19 - Wednesday 25th
We woke up fairly early, definitely early enough to have breakfast with all the business peeps at the hotel. The range of food on offer wasn't amazing but we made do. A few train rides later and we found ourselves at Tobu-dobutsu-koen station. This photo below proves it...
Not sure how easy it would be to navigate to Tobu Zoo we were happy to see the sign above us with helpful directions, it was a good sign.
The train station had some burger chain fast food place, they were the ones with the ridiculous tower burgers in which you can keep adding more to (what the 120/150Y bit is all about)...
New things! We love new things
The signs continued to do their job correctly
The whole route to the park (a 10-15 minute walk) had these little picture tiles in the pavement which was cool...
Before long we could see exciting things...
I'd like to point out that doing this walk was so much easier than Google street view made it look. The following bridge has to be crossed...
A pretty river
Once across the bridge you turn right which is where you'll see the park entrance...
Terrifying spider
As you can tell from the following picture the weather wasn't great, there were rainy spells on and off all day.
Right
We then had to queue a whole 0 seconds to get some tickets. The lady behind the counter tried her best to inform us that rides might not open. She did wait until we had purchased our tickets to inform us of this though. After Yokohama spite we weren't pleased by this news but with the potential for the weather to get better we decided to just try and make the most of our day no matter what.
There better be real hippos
Regina teases
I love Intamin drop towers, I don't like closed ones though
We came across the first little area of rides including a very closed but still moving ferris wheel. We decided to venture into Galaxy Walkers. It was special.
So, just what is Galaxy Walkers? It's a very outdated walkthrough attraction from the 80s is what it is. The 3 staff members at the entrance looked amused that we were going to give it a go and gave us a sheet explaining everything in English. I like parks that are prepared for us. The whole idea is that there's loads of different rooms with tasks of sorts. Nic doesn't like things jumping out so to say some of the rooms were not to her liking would be an understatement. I bet the staff loved watching us over the CCTV. All the effects were quite outdated but sort of amusing. Well, not for Nic. There was one room where you had to find the door that led to the rest of the attraction. One of the doors we opened had this little alien figure and a loud noise, we both jumped lol. The door that did work led us into a pitch black room which freaked both of us out a bit, the not knowing what could happen made it quite an intense moment. Especially after spending ages trying to convince Nic it would be ok to go through.
At the end there was a tub filled with these things with barcodes on. You then had to go to the back of it, pass through the barcodes and hope you find the right one. We just chucked all of them through and we found the correct one pretty quickly.
I can't remember what happens after that but we soon exited the attraction a little puzzled by this very dated attraction.
Closed cred
I think Nic was pleased that this was closed
More closed cred
We decided to ride the carousel next, not sure why.
I love how these TOGO animals are like a thing in Japanese parks.
A new kids area was under construction for 2014 season already and it includes a kiddy cred!
There was a random area filled with topiarys of animals, it was oddly no where near a path.
Ferris wheel #2 was part of a new farmyard area. It was cleverly themed to a cheese factory. We were quite impressed that a park had gone to the trouble of giving such an attraction a whole theme and story. It also worked quite well.
The new area was really nice.
Soft play area for the little ones
Inside the cheese
The cat loved Halloween
On the wheel we could see the other wheel...
Penguin bus!
Mud!
OMG the cat is called Fondu!
So we then totally went on the tractor ride. We also went on the train ride.
It was then time for us to start exploring the zoo. Geese are terrifying.
Squirrel monkeys!
What we saw next totally changed our lives forever. RED PANDA!!!!!!!!
They have to be the cutest thing in existence. We'll be coming back to see them as they were inside sleeping due to the weather.
The penguin enclosure was quite cool, they had about 6 or 7 different species of penguin.
The goat enclosure was a little scary, because goats just are.
Kawaii owl.
They had a kangaroo walkthrough enclosure so we decided to venture in.
There were some on the path which led us to just backtrack rather than try and get past.
I'm fabulous
Yo
They had a lemur walkthrough enclosure which I was so excited by, but it turned out to be a little awkward. It was just us two and then two zoo keepers. All pretty much standing in silence watching the lemurs going mental.
They had bears in small cages.
And they had hip-hip-hippopotamus.
They had a big family of white Tigers.
The lions were pretty much doing the same, sleeping. There was a passageway which allowed you to enter a small viewing area in the middle of the enclosure. It got you so close to them.
I bet you think that small plastic viewing area is for a kid don't you.
What's that small shadow?
That small shadow is this little fellow...
YES, a meerkat can go see the Lions if they so choose
The tunnel leads to a large meerkat enclosure
It's so bizarre, I wouldn't have said that meerkats would like living in such close proximity to Lions.
There were some 'mingos...
The rhino didn't look too pleased about his enclosure
As we were getting back round to where the rides were we heard something magical. We heard the sound of a coaster running. It could only mean one thing, Kawasemi was open!!!!!!!! Being only two of about 20 people in the actual park we were the first on.
It was so amazing, I had heard loads of people rave about Piraten but couldn't quite believe the hype. Well if it runs anything like this then I can totally believe the hype now. It's got so much airtime and the ride just flows so well. We became instant fans of it. We had a couple of goes before grabbing some food as we were starving by this point.
The food we got was quite nice and the staff were lovely, it was more like a school cafeteria than a park restaurant. After some more Kawasemi awesomeness we noticed that the caterpillar cred was testing.
Although the following then happened time and time again.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKUQTr23oE[/youtube]
It was getting a little frustrating, just continuous testing. A small crowd had formed at the excitement of getting the cred.
We really wanted to know what the whole additional 2013 bit was all about. We never asked anyone but we eventually worked out that it was a thing the park were doing where you got like a card sheet and got a stamp for every ride you went on. If only we had known we would have totally done this. Anyway after some time waiting the ride finally opened and the goons that we are we were like the first in the queue and we managed to get front row.
We then went back for another ride on Kawasemi. By this point others had discovered its wonders so although we didn't have to queue we only decided to only do it once before moving on.
Engrish <3
We felt like getting a snack so went to the little bear stall which we had seen at other parks. We had the sundae which involved one of the little bears on top of some soft serve ice cream with some corn flakes at the bottom. It was nom.
We then went back into the zoo because we wanted to see the red pandas again because they're so adorable. This time they were out and about and being like the cutest things ever <3
They sort of leap about which is so cute
They loved climbing up and down the slope
Can I has one now?
The Elephant says no
There were more squirrel monkeys in an outdoor enclosure, they were confined to these little islands with all these ropes going everywhere.
We decided to then take the train ride over to the area where Regina lives. The ride was open! We couldn't believe our luck. From thinking we wouldn't get any of the three coasters to riding all three really made our day.
Looking a little worse for wear
Goon board
Regina was actually amazing but from the front row I could tell that the back would probably be dreadful so I decided to skip going to the back row, unlike Nic who seemed to love it. Oddly enough we had decided that just two rides was enough despite no one else in the area. It had started to rain a little bit though which did make our second ride a little bit more unbearable.
So, as we had gotten off and down the slippery slope of an exit we decided to head back over to Kawasemi for one last ride on that.
And that was the end of our time at Tobu Zoo. It was a shame the weather was miserable but the park was nice, a little dated in some areas but generally nice. I think it could have done with more people in the park too, I think that would have provided a nice atmosphere.
That wasn't the end of our day though, we only had a few days left in Japan and we weren't going to just sit around.
The cloudy weather made the Skytree look even more awesome...
We decided to check out Akihabara which is an area of Tokyo well known for its arcades and electronics shops. There was an AKB48 cafe which I'm a little annoyed we didn't go in (purely for the lolz). Fun fact: AKB48 stands for Akihabara, the 48 stands for how many people are in the group. I'll let that ridiculousness set in.
Next door was a cafe themed to Gundam. They love their themed cafes/restaurants, they even had a British pub....
One of about 5 million Sega arcades in the area
Knowing what was on each floor and how to get to them was sometimes confusing
Taito stations (another arcade company) were also everywhere
Colonel Sanders gets about
We nearly ended up in here
The signs and logos were amusing
Pachinko madness
We ended up in a restaurant on like the 8th floor of some building. It was quite nice inside. There was a large table of really loud people. Judging by the reactions of other guests and all the photos and excitement one or more of the people on that table were famous. It added to the atmosphere and amusement anyhow. We were creating our own amusement though.
The above is a touch screen ordering system. The waiter advised us to use it but said we could call him over if need be. We have no idea what we were doing and I don't know why we even tried to use it. The kitchen must have been getting all these orders coming through when we were like "panic! help!". The waiter came over, deleted our mistakes and took our proper order. Let's look at what we successfully ordered.
Some chicken
A whole plate of gyoza <3 <3 <3
A salad, I know right, how exciting
We got given some toy related to a promotion they were running, it made Nic's day
Various chicken pieces on skewers. They were a little gross, full of gristle.
The logo of the restaurant/bar, they're a chain
We then spent a couple of hours, being talked to by maids, spending loads of money in arcades and getting claustrophobic in magna comic stores (they were very popular places to be). It was then back to the hotel for some rest.
Thanks again for reading
We woke up fairly early, definitely early enough to have breakfast with all the business peeps at the hotel. The range of food on offer wasn't amazing but we made do. A few train rides later and we found ourselves at Tobu-dobutsu-koen station. This photo below proves it...
Not sure how easy it would be to navigate to Tobu Zoo we were happy to see the sign above us with helpful directions, it was a good sign.
The train station had some burger chain fast food place, they were the ones with the ridiculous tower burgers in which you can keep adding more to (what the 120/150Y bit is all about)...
New things! We love new things
The signs continued to do their job correctly
The whole route to the park (a 10-15 minute walk) had these little picture tiles in the pavement which was cool...
Before long we could see exciting things...
I'd like to point out that doing this walk was so much easier than Google street view made it look. The following bridge has to be crossed...
A pretty river
Once across the bridge you turn right which is where you'll see the park entrance...
Terrifying spider
As you can tell from the following picture the weather wasn't great, there were rainy spells on and off all day.
Right
We then had to queue a whole 0 seconds to get some tickets. The lady behind the counter tried her best to inform us that rides might not open. She did wait until we had purchased our tickets to inform us of this though. After Yokohama spite we weren't pleased by this news but with the potential for the weather to get better we decided to just try and make the most of our day no matter what.
There better be real hippos
Regina teases
I love Intamin drop towers, I don't like closed ones though
We came across the first little area of rides including a very closed but still moving ferris wheel. We decided to venture into Galaxy Walkers. It was special.
So, just what is Galaxy Walkers? It's a very outdated walkthrough attraction from the 80s is what it is. The 3 staff members at the entrance looked amused that we were going to give it a go and gave us a sheet explaining everything in English. I like parks that are prepared for us. The whole idea is that there's loads of different rooms with tasks of sorts. Nic doesn't like things jumping out so to say some of the rooms were not to her liking would be an understatement. I bet the staff loved watching us over the CCTV. All the effects were quite outdated but sort of amusing. Well, not for Nic. There was one room where you had to find the door that led to the rest of the attraction. One of the doors we opened had this little alien figure and a loud noise, we both jumped lol. The door that did work led us into a pitch black room which freaked both of us out a bit, the not knowing what could happen made it quite an intense moment. Especially after spending ages trying to convince Nic it would be ok to go through.
At the end there was a tub filled with these things with barcodes on. You then had to go to the back of it, pass through the barcodes and hope you find the right one. We just chucked all of them through and we found the correct one pretty quickly.
I can't remember what happens after that but we soon exited the attraction a little puzzled by this very dated attraction.
Closed cred
I think Nic was pleased that this was closed
More closed cred
We decided to ride the carousel next, not sure why.
I love how these TOGO animals are like a thing in Japanese parks.
A new kids area was under construction for 2014 season already and it includes a kiddy cred!
There was a random area filled with topiarys of animals, it was oddly no where near a path.
Ferris wheel #2 was part of a new farmyard area. It was cleverly themed to a cheese factory. We were quite impressed that a park had gone to the trouble of giving such an attraction a whole theme and story. It also worked quite well.
The new area was really nice.
Soft play area for the little ones
Inside the cheese
The cat loved Halloween
On the wheel we could see the other wheel...
Penguin bus!
Mud!
OMG the cat is called Fondu!
So we then totally went on the tractor ride. We also went on the train ride.
It was then time for us to start exploring the zoo. Geese are terrifying.
Squirrel monkeys!
What we saw next totally changed our lives forever. RED PANDA!!!!!!!!
They have to be the cutest thing in existence. We'll be coming back to see them as they were inside sleeping due to the weather.
The penguin enclosure was quite cool, they had about 6 or 7 different species of penguin.
The goat enclosure was a little scary, because goats just are.
Kawaii owl.
They had a kangaroo walkthrough enclosure so we decided to venture in.
There were some on the path which led us to just backtrack rather than try and get past.
I'm fabulous
Yo
They had a lemur walkthrough enclosure which I was so excited by, but it turned out to be a little awkward. It was just us two and then two zoo keepers. All pretty much standing in silence watching the lemurs going mental.
They had bears in small cages.
And they had hip-hip-hippopotamus.
They had a big family of white Tigers.
The lions were pretty much doing the same, sleeping. There was a passageway which allowed you to enter a small viewing area in the middle of the enclosure. It got you so close to them.
I bet you think that small plastic viewing area is for a kid don't you.
What's that small shadow?
That small shadow is this little fellow...
YES, a meerkat can go see the Lions if they so choose
The tunnel leads to a large meerkat enclosure
It's so bizarre, I wouldn't have said that meerkats would like living in such close proximity to Lions.
There were some 'mingos...
The rhino didn't look too pleased about his enclosure
As we were getting back round to where the rides were we heard something magical. We heard the sound of a coaster running. It could only mean one thing, Kawasemi was open!!!!!!!! Being only two of about 20 people in the actual park we were the first on.
It was so amazing, I had heard loads of people rave about Piraten but couldn't quite believe the hype. Well if it runs anything like this then I can totally believe the hype now. It's got so much airtime and the ride just flows so well. We became instant fans of it. We had a couple of goes before grabbing some food as we were starving by this point.
The food we got was quite nice and the staff were lovely, it was more like a school cafeteria than a park restaurant. After some more Kawasemi awesomeness we noticed that the caterpillar cred was testing.
Although the following then happened time and time again.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgKUQTr23oE[/youtube]
It was getting a little frustrating, just continuous testing. A small crowd had formed at the excitement of getting the cred.
We really wanted to know what the whole additional 2013 bit was all about. We never asked anyone but we eventually worked out that it was a thing the park were doing where you got like a card sheet and got a stamp for every ride you went on. If only we had known we would have totally done this. Anyway after some time waiting the ride finally opened and the goons that we are we were like the first in the queue and we managed to get front row.
We then went back for another ride on Kawasemi. By this point others had discovered its wonders so although we didn't have to queue we only decided to only do it once before moving on.
Engrish <3
We felt like getting a snack so went to the little bear stall which we had seen at other parks. We had the sundae which involved one of the little bears on top of some soft serve ice cream with some corn flakes at the bottom. It was nom.
We then went back into the zoo because we wanted to see the red pandas again because they're so adorable. This time they were out and about and being like the cutest things ever <3
They sort of leap about which is so cute
They loved climbing up and down the slope
Can I has one now?
The Elephant says no
There were more squirrel monkeys in an outdoor enclosure, they were confined to these little islands with all these ropes going everywhere.
We decided to then take the train ride over to the area where Regina lives. The ride was open! We couldn't believe our luck. From thinking we wouldn't get any of the three coasters to riding all three really made our day.
Looking a little worse for wear
Goon board
Regina was actually amazing but from the front row I could tell that the back would probably be dreadful so I decided to skip going to the back row, unlike Nic who seemed to love it. Oddly enough we had decided that just two rides was enough despite no one else in the area. It had started to rain a little bit though which did make our second ride a little bit more unbearable.
So, as we had gotten off and down the slippery slope of an exit we decided to head back over to Kawasemi for one last ride on that.
And that was the end of our time at Tobu Zoo. It was a shame the weather was miserable but the park was nice, a little dated in some areas but generally nice. I think it could have done with more people in the park too, I think that would have provided a nice atmosphere.
That wasn't the end of our day though, we only had a few days left in Japan and we weren't going to just sit around.
The cloudy weather made the Skytree look even more awesome...
We decided to check out Akihabara which is an area of Tokyo well known for its arcades and electronics shops. There was an AKB48 cafe which I'm a little annoyed we didn't go in (purely for the lolz). Fun fact: AKB48 stands for Akihabara, the 48 stands for how many people are in the group. I'll let that ridiculousness set in.
Next door was a cafe themed to Gundam. They love their themed cafes/restaurants, they even had a British pub....
One of about 5 million Sega arcades in the area
Knowing what was on each floor and how to get to them was sometimes confusing
Taito stations (another arcade company) were also everywhere
Colonel Sanders gets about
We nearly ended up in here
The signs and logos were amusing
Pachinko madness
We ended up in a restaurant on like the 8th floor of some building. It was quite nice inside. There was a large table of really loud people. Judging by the reactions of other guests and all the photos and excitement one or more of the people on that table were famous. It added to the atmosphere and amusement anyhow. We were creating our own amusement though.
The above is a touch screen ordering system. The waiter advised us to use it but said we could call him over if need be. We have no idea what we were doing and I don't know why we even tried to use it. The kitchen must have been getting all these orders coming through when we were like "panic! help!". The waiter came over, deleted our mistakes and took our proper order. Let's look at what we successfully ordered.
Some chicken
A whole plate of gyoza <3 <3 <3
A salad, I know right, how exciting
We got given some toy related to a promotion they were running, it made Nic's day
Various chicken pieces on skewers. They were a little gross, full of gristle.
The logo of the restaurant/bar, they're a chain
We then spent a couple of hours, being talked to by maids, spending loads of money in arcades and getting claustrophobic in magna comic stores (they were very popular places to be). It was then back to the hotel for some rest.
Thanks again for reading
