Tama Zoo

Marley and Seth took the train yesterday morning to kill time while Kelly and I slept.  They have a routine during the week where they will take the train somewhere and get a cinnamon role or other sweet pastry and then come back and it'll be my turn to watch him until we take him to school.  It has gotten to the point where when they walk into the coffee shop at Mitaka the lady will grab a cinnamon role and two small cups of water and bring it to them before they even get to the counter.

Since yesterday was a weekend for us Seth and Marley ventured to a new stop on the train.  They ended up at Tachikawa which is a few stops SW of Kodaira.  They found a  monorail that led to a zoo.  To give Kelly some time to get more work done Seth and I decided to take Marley to the zoo after breakfast.  This was by far much better than the zoo we went to in Tokyo.  First, it wasn't in downtown Tokyo so they had more room for the animals, more space overall, and more of each animal.  Also, the zoo in Tokyo  you could get within 10 feet of the animals but there were huge fences in between you and the animals that distorted the views and pictures.  You felt like it was a cage and not a real experience of the animals naturally.  The Tama zoo however did not have any gates but rather a fence that was about hip height and then the animals were a little father away behind another hip high fence.  This was better though because you could really see them without anything in the way.

This zoo also had a bus that would take you into the lion habitat.  It was a long line, that didn't go well with Marley, but once we were finally in the bus we all sat facing the windows.  On the outside of each window was a peg with a raw piece of meat hanging off it.  As we drove around we saw all the lions sleeping and walking.  The the bus went up right next to a bench where two lions were laying.  One got up and came right up to the windows to grab the meat.  It was so cool! The lion was literally inches from us only stopped by a window in the bus!

We only made it about 1/5 of the way through the zoo because Marley was tired form not sleeping well the night before.  We will definitely have to go back before I leave though to see the rest!