As I mentioned yesterday, I was at Ueno Park the other day. Aside from the random sightings of Anpanman (I also saw him strapped to the roof of a truck), I also made my first ever visit to the Ueno Park Zoo.

I am not really a fan of zoos (I dislike seeing large animals in small cages), and the fact that the Ueno Zoo first opened in 1882 had always caused me to envision a particularly cramped and unpleasant environment for the animals.

I was, however, mildly surprised to see that a number of the faux habitats were larger than I’d expected. There was, of course, an absolute frenzy around the Giant Pandas (which are housed in a small-ish cage in a dark tunnel) – Pandas don’t really interest me, so I didn’t even try to get a picture because there were more cameras and camera flashes going off than around Lindsay Lohan after one of her “fatigue” episodes.

I spent a bit of time at the Gorilla enclosure (mainly because Ms. James had never seen a live one). One of the captives had a cute blanket:

Anyway, didn’t linger too long at the zoo – it’s not that big, the sun was shining, and the idea of sitting al fresco with a cool beverage was more appealing than traipsing around smelly animal enclosures.

This is my favourite shot from the day:

…but not at the zoo.