I went to the zoo on February 22nd. It was a chilly overcast day and I walked from my apartment off the Dotonbori. First I decided to walk through Shinsekai (new world), a past-its-prime world expo style outdoor shopping district and entertainment area. It reminded me a bit of the Tel Aviv central bus station (scheduled to close in 2022, then delayed to 2026) or Singapore's Rochor center (demolished in 2017, rest in peace), although this area still actively receives tourists and visitors, although the area has a seediness to it now.
Nearby to the zoo is Tobita Shinchi, Osaka's historic red light district. It's still quite active. Heart-pounding, I walked through, trying to avoid eye contact with the old woman calling. Each storefront is set up the same way: a small open room, open to the street like a garage. There's a small raised floor that covers most of the room, the kind of architectural nudge that in Japan indicates where you remove your shoes. The decor is pink and cheap, like an AirBnb bordello. In the center, on a zaisu piled with cushions, sits a young woman, made-up, sometimes costumed, smiling and giggling at the men who walking by. Nearby her, an older woman loudly beckons the men over. Sometimes, the zaisu is empty and the old woman is on her phone.
In between Tobita Shinchi and the zoo is a old covered shopping area filled with dozens of tiny karaoke bars, where office workers can go and drunkenly sing old Japanese ballads with an young attractive bartender. There are beer vending machines in the alleys. I saw a drunken man trying to sweep up trash in an alley. I don't know if he was responsible for that space or just doing his part. Outside of the zoo, I found an old rundown movie / porno theater. It looked like someone hand-painted the movie posters, including one for a Finnish nazi-killing John Wick style action joint that I want to watch with my dad. After the zoo, I didn't return to see a movie, which I regret a bit now. It seems like the kind of place that could be consumed any day.
The Tennoji Zoo in Osaka was built in 1915, the third zoo in Japan. Entrance was ¥500, so actually accessible to regular people, but it showed in the facility's maintenance; there was a ramshackle quality about it, strongly evidenced by the hand-drawn cardboard information signs put up everywhere. Like the movie posters, they showed simultaneously a deep personal affection and a stark institutional neglect. I couldn't help but feel like the last time this place got a influx of money was in the 90s. Turns out I was probably right. Ten years after the 1980 World Conservation Strategy was released, the Tennoji Zoo began renovating exhibits to be more naturalistic. It seems like they got about halfway and ran out of funds.
Mouflon quiz: What are you feeding them this season? Pinecones? Acorns? Ginkgo nuts?
This is a hole-bear (badger). It's not a bear. O Japanese badger. X Malayan sun bear
I entered the zoo and took a clockwise path around the grounds. First up was the museum of invertebrates, fish, amphibians and reptiles. This was one of the first renovated exhibits and felt the most similar to zoos I had been to in the US. I've always love the reptiles most of all. I used to subscribe to Reptiles magazine, and when I was little, I wanted to become a herpetologist. A lot of the fauna here was southeast Asian and Australian, which was neat.
Best Godzilla cosplay I've ever seen
She was hiding near the top of the case, but I waited and got lucky
These guys were digging through the rocks for little worms. It was cute.
A snake-necked turtle, my favorite from the whole trip. Also one of my two best pics I think.
After the reptile house came the African Savanna, also renovated to be more open and naturalistic. They couldn't do anything about the weather however. I always wonder if that's a problem, but maybe they move them inside in the deep winter. The rhino exhibit has exceptional line of sight and honestly, almost nothing keeping people out, which I was a bit surprised about. I tried to get a picture with the Tsutenkaku Tower in the background, a metropolitan intrusion into this “naturalistic” environment. I wonder if the rhino can see the tower, or if it cares.
There was an outdoor hyena exhibit as well as an herbivore exhibit with an okapi and a giraffe. Did you know that giraffes long necks are likely not a result of natural selection? Actual observations of giraffes show that many spend more than half their time feeding horizontally (amen to that, am I right?) and frequently eat low trees and bushes. Some scientists now believe that it was sexual selection via male “necking” that caused them to develop as long as they did, and the trees thing was a convenient side effect. In other words, men would literally rather grow long necks and bash them together than go to therapy. Relatedly, after taking some nice pictures of a lioness pacing near the glass of her enclosure and leaving, I was summoned back by the most ungodly throaty hacking sound. It was the male lion just screeching. I didn't record the sound but I got some good pictures. The lionesses completely ignored him.
I saw a tanuki for the first time! They're called raccoon dogs in English and most famously, their pelts give you the ability to fly. After that, one of the highlights of any Asian zoo: the red pandas. Red panda's are so. fucking. cute. These girls had a whole jungle gym to play on and while I was taking pics, the zookeeper came around an hid snacks in these little tubes and the red pandas scampered after his fishing them out. It was awesome.
Some other assorted mammals.
My other best photo.
They had a nocturnal house, which was interesting. It was pretty hard to see anything, so no pictures. There were a couple of enclosures with massive bat polycules just writhing on the ceiling. It looked to me like one bat was hanging out, doing its thing, and literally dozens of others just latched on, which is also how human polycules work. Also, they had a kiwi. Dear reader, you need to understand something about kiwis. They are not the size of kiwis. They are like small dogs. If you told me a kiwi was a baby ostrich I would believe you. Apparently there was a minor controversy earlier in the year when a fellow kiwi (the human kind) reported that the enclosure wasn't suitable. By the time I got there, it was quite dark, so it seems like they've addressed the issue. I get why New Zealand would get upset about it though. It would be like having a bald eagle in an enclosure without a McDonald's.
Sorry for that.
As the zoo was getting ready to shut down, I visited the cold weather exhibits. There was a confused looking polar bear, some penguins (the only bird exhibit we could get anywhere near due to the bird flu apparently), and some sea lions. Ironically, the sea lion enclosure was also designed “naturalistically”, with Japanese approximation of the tourist trap that is fisherman's wharf in San Francisco, where I just moved from.
With that, the zoo was closing up. I wandered around the area for a while longer and then made my way back home. Zoos are a really nostalgic place for me. My mom used to take me pretty frequently in Pittsburgh. Every time we went, I'd get one plastic animal figure. They are sort of painted rubber I guess, a little flex but mostly stiff, and I'd take them in the bathtub with me. I never had a truck phase, or planes or trains, or cars. Actually, why are boys so into transportation? I just got really into animals. I'd get animal encyclopedias out of the library from school and read them on the bus home. At one point I even started printing out pictures from Encarta online and sorting them by their taxonomy into folders. I was a really cool kid. Anyway, I'm hanging onto them for when I have kids myself. No construction vehicles for my little ones.
Thanks for reading.