Ueno Zoo!

I started writing this post as part of the arrival post, realized it was unwieldy as heck, tried to break them up, and turns out Blogger doesn't copy to clipboard 🫠. So that's nice, very cool, more work for me to try and recreate the post, which I'd started days ago, purely from memory. Thanks, Blogger!!

Anyway.

After dropping our bags off at the Edo Sakura, it was 11am and we still had the rest of the day to fill until we could actually check in. Luckily, Ueno Park and Zoo were very close!

Ueno Park is also huge at 538,506.96 m² containing within it not only the zoo but also 7 museums,  2 performing arts halls, 2 or 3 smaller academies or universities, 6 bodies of water, 3 shrines, a Yayoi-period burial mound... yeah. Also, it's the oldest park in Japan. Unfortunately, we didn't see most of it due to time and physical constraints, but we did spend the afternoon at the Zoo!

Here are some of the animals we saw:

Rock ptarmigan!

A variety of fancy finches!

Crested finch

Great tit intent on his lunch

African eagle! His beak was kind of sticking out the fence.

Fancy crested bird!

Giant Panda Riri! Are we looking at a zoo exhibit, or is she lounging on her favorite grassy spot, eating her favorite food and watching a parade of weird apes entertaining her?

Red pandas! On left, mother Karin, on right, her son Luka. Forgive the weird background, I had to edit out faces.

MANUL!! Look at their little ears and dense fur! I love them!!

Chinese bird, I forget the name but it's one of those that inflates their blue chest sacs to attract mates. Look at how the late afternoon sun shines on his feathers!

Golden pheasants!

The app seems to be straining under all these pictures, so I must end the post here. It was beautiful and we walked so much we both had blisters on our feet, but it was WORTH IT!