Saturday 7/10

Today we trekked back up the same way as last Saturday, towards the lakes and Sendai, but instead went to the Safari Park. It is a zoo where you drive through some of it and walk around some of it. It reminded me of the Potowatami Zoo in South Bend, Indiana in my grade-school days. Zoos in the USA and (hopefully) elsewhere have progressed since then, and I sincerely hope the Japanese economy recovers someday so this particular Safari Park's animals can enjoy a more modern habitat. It was much better than the zoo I visited in Brazil in 1995, however, so I guess that is something. And, of course, the animals are protected from their predators and get enough to eat. The ones roaming around were clearly used to humans and their vehicles, as you can see from the pictures.
Ms. Sato, the music teacher, drove us in her car and once we got there we switched to a Safari car. This was a good thing to do, given what came next. We saw a few families use their own cars, most notably a Mazda van, and after seeing what the animals do to the cars, there is NO WAY I would drive my Ford mini-van through the park. And as for ever driving the 911 through, perish the thought! The deer, llamas, zebras, goats, horses, buffalo and camels would stand on it!
We got animal food and fed the animals through partly-open windows. They were quite aggressive with each other, jockying around for position. Lauren made the mistake of not giving a zebra (or was it a llama?) enough food and it spit on her! I heard it behind me and turned around to see her covered in animal food/spit. Ugh.
We did see the lions and were instructed not to open our windows for them, probably a good thing, and then drove to the part where we walked around. Here we saw the white lions and white tigers, the regular striped tiger, owls, a red panda, wolves, peacocks, an albino peakcock, and the reptile house. There were some tucans in this house as well. Nearby was an oval track where some young guys were doing S-curves in their Japanese muscle cars. Some wore helmets, and some passangers did as well, but not all did. They certainly burned tons of rubber out there!
After the Safari park we stopped for lunch near an ancient castle and then went on to see a Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Graphic Arts. Here they would not let us take photos, but Ms. Sato did get to take one photo each of us standing by our favorite piece. They were all very good, and I was glad to get to see the exhibit.
We later went to dinner in a new place which looked like an American or English pub. They were packed, and charged a table fee. But the food was good, as usual. I managed to avoid rice. (OK, OK, I will stop with the rice comments....... after all, I knew this job was dangerous when I took it, in more ways than I care to comment about here........!)