Category: Animals

Sweet & Petite

July 7, 2013

Remember how we sponsored a duck at a nearby animal sanctuary? Yesterday, for the first time, we went to visit her!

Patito is a mallard, and she’s tiny. She lives in a lovely enclosure with her friend Pip and two other ducks. Here’s Patito and Pip:

Look how mini she is! We were taken to see her by one of the volunteers who told us how feisty and noisy Patito was. She didn’t disappoint, quacking endlessly as we held and patted her:

Here she is undoing KLS’s shoelaces with her beak:

It was great to finally meet ‘our’ little duck, and we feel even better about the work being done by the sanctuary. It’s good to know little Patito is healthy and happy and in good hands 🙂

Deer

June 13, 2013

We fled the Tokyo rain and headed west to Kyoto, 500 km distant or 2.5 hours on the bullet train. The trip looked like this:

As soon as we arrived we 2-hit-combo’d onto a second (and very nice!) express train for the scenic city of Nara.

Here’s what we found in Nara:

They are everywhere! In front of you, behind you, even above you (if for some reason you are in a dungeon under Nara). They are Japanese Sika deer, and they have lived free in Nara for over 1000 years. Intensely fearless and curious, they swarm tourists hoping to get ‘deer biscuits’ sold by vendors:

I had just finished handing out biscuits to some deer before taking the above shot. Look closely to see the deer trying to eat the tourist guide in my pocket! I even had deer nibble on my shirt and shoelaces!

Of course Nara isn’t just about Deer… It’s also about school children on school trips:

I jest (although school kids outnumber even the deer). Nara is about sights like Todaiji temple:

Which contained this gargantuan statue:

Or the nearby shrine with 1000 stone lanterns:

Oh, a deer photobombed me.

The heat was intense today; a maximum of 95 degrees. We spent about 6 hours outdoors, and unsurprisingly this was tiring to this group of nonstop tourists. Upon eventually arriving back to our (western!) hotel in Kyoto, the sleep was bliss 🙂

Here Comes The Rain…

June 11, 2013

The destination for the day was Enoshima Island via the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura. After training it (~70 minutes) to the area, we hiked up and down a mountain for a bit:

This was part of the ‘Daibutsu hiking course’ and eventually led us to a wonderful little shrine and rest stop..,

At which KLS cooled herself…

And we met a cat!

As you can see, the grizzled beast was quite popular 🙂

A bit further on we reached Zentairi (sp?), a famous shrine said to increase the fortunes of anyone who washes money in its spring waters. The place was full of school children.

Eventually, after some Kamakura ‘boulevarding’, we reached the famous great Daibutsu statue:

It’s almost 800 years old, was cast in 30 pieces and is hollow (we went inside). A light rain had started to fall by now, and we were resting whenever it was convenient:

Oh, we saw squirrels yesterday!! I saw the first climbing bamboo but the second was on the street in Kamakura. He was very curious and came right up to a small crowd of people:

Look how brown and wooly he is! How cute!

After the train, at Enoshima station, we found too women posing a Woody revoltech figurine in a manner indicative of the ‘Hentai Woody’ meme! (Google search at your own risk, btw):

I trust Bernard will post a good close up photo of Woody 🙂

That’s Enoshima island, which is as beautiful as we remembered. We slowly made our way up the island, and Bernard and I went to the top of the Sea Candle tower for a panoramic view:

And then… the rains came! Finally, the two (B was paying me to carry his…) umbrellas I had carried for 5 hours came in useful! On the top of the island, without climbing down the other side to see the dragon cave, we started the long, wet trek back:

Robot Claw