This morning was gorgeous and sunny, so I decided to do one of the things from my Tokyo for Free guidebook, and went out to Gyosen Park, and the free zoo in it which is run by the Edogawa Ward. It was a bit of a trek on the subway, but not too bad, nothing a couple of podcasts couldn't take care of! I stopped at a bakery in the station (bakeries are soooo good here!) and got some stuff for lunch, and then had a picnic by the huge fountain in the park before going into the zoo.
(random fountain shot)

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about zoos, and my gut instinct would be that this one didn't have big enough enclosures (especially for the sea lions or whatever they were, practically swimming on top of each other as they did laps), but the monkeys and other animals seemed pretty happy. They had three different types of monkeys... so cool! The spider monkeys were just flying around, running up and down high tensile ropes and being very cirque du soleil-ish in their movements...There was a baby, and he was sooo cute, just generally cavorting around, while the older looking ones just hung out in their trees and sunned themselves sensibly.
(baby was so cute! he was pretty good at swinging himself around and catching himself with his tail already...I wish I could do that!)
(sharing a secret of some sort?)
(in the other enclosure there was also a baby, this one was maybe younger since it stayed with its mom most of the time...)
(big group of monkeys...I think there was food in the water just below them...)
("Look Mom! No hands...or feet!" those tails are pretty cool!)

There were also penguins and a lone snowy egret in together. The penguins weren't very big, only about a foot tall, but pretty cute! I'm not sure what kind they were, some sort that doesn't mind the heat I guess, but couldn't read the signs... They were fishing for pre killed fish which seemed a little weird (like whole, dead, small fish lying at the bottom of their pond), but who knows, maybe penguins are lazy and don't like having to work too hard for their supper?
(single snowy egret (pretty sure that's what that is, anyway), I liked the reflection of the water across it's body...)
(one of the penguins, there were several, in and out of their pool)
(having a swim and probably some lunch, the fish were just below him)
(one of the other animals, a lesser panda - kind of a cross between a raccoon and a panda visually speaking, very cute!)
(prairie dogs having lunch-funny to see these guys in a zoo! Same with the grey squirrel exhibit, those guys are a dime a dozen at home!)

After I finished taking waaaaay too many pictures of the awesome monkeys, I made my way home and discovered Felly here baking the wedding cake for Yukiko's wedding party on Sunday... It smelled delicious, and she made us a few cupcakes with the leftover batter, very tasty! I took V. out for a walk to get her out of Felly's hair, and then we came back and I worked on my scrapbook and dipped into Peter's ridiculous comedy shelf to watch Mel Brook's History of the World Part 1. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it... I think my main problem was only listening to it and not watching it while I was working on my scrapbook-the parts where I was actually watching were much funnier!

Peter came home at 8:30ish and has just been watching Sopranos season 6, while I made myself some udon for dinner, worked a little bit on that dinner party thing (starting to get a bit worried that eight people's worth or whatever I'd planned is just going to look like a big mess), and started 'The Time Traveller's Wife'. (I finished 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' earlier today - good book!)

Tomorrow at ten I'm meeting a family that I was introduced to through someone from the Tokyo Writer's Day - they have two kids I might be tutoring, so I should go get some sleep... No idea why (OK, I have an idea it has to do with my pump keeping me awake all night!), but I'm exhausted, so that's all for today...at least there are cute pictures to make up for the spotty writing :)

D