Monkey Park

Greg had today off both because he worked all weekend and it's Columbus day. We decided to go check out a park in Nago. Its called Neo Park and it's really more zoo than park. We bought a ticket that included admission to the park and a train ride. As you enter the park you buy a small blue packet of food for the birds, because this park is very hands on. The moment you walk in through the entrance you see that the birds, in this case cranes and ibis' are just wandering around enjoying all the food being tossed out by the kids. There are no cages per se, the animals just wander around and the people just toss out the food never worrying about being bitten by anything. There were even monkeys climbing the trees eating bananas that people had brought to feed them. The monkeys didn't really seem all that interested in the bananas so it reasons that people must bring quite a bit of food for them since they were pretty choosy. The next section of the park allowed us to walk through a tunnel with took us through part of a lake, the fish swam by in relatively murky water. Next we came upon the petting zoo, which is like no petting zoo I've ever seen. Firstly, there were a lot of tiny dogs running around which you could feed for 200 Yen, you could also feed bunnies, a huge tortoise which we were also encouraged to ride, some capybaras and llamas. We of course purchased the food and fed all the animals. Gabriella stood next to the giant tortoise but had no real desire to ride it. As we wandered through the rest of the park we saw lemurs, more birds and some giant fish. Our day ended with a train ride which took us around the whole park and gave us a lovely narrative in Japanese. The animals all seemed well cared for and healthy. The park itself had some interesting signage and carefully constructed paths for walking. It was an interesting place to visit, we'd never see anything like it in the states because the insurance costs would be astronomical.