Day Seventeen: Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

Dang, that was a poetic title. I’m probably feeling more pride right now than such an accomplishment merits.

And now on a completely unrelated note, I find that I often don’t understand the English writing on shirts here.

For example, I saw a man today with a shirt that said “I’m the first beagle on the moon!” What does that even mean? Is it code for something? Why are there beagles on the moon? Dude, I need to know! Don’t just leave me hanging!

Moving on.

The first stop today was a flower garden. It was very beautiful, and they even had what they called a “Mexican Garden” there. This basically means that the entire garden consisted of cacti, which was kind of cool.

On the way out of the bathroom (because apparently I have bladder problems), I saw a street magician. Otosan and Okasan were already sitting over there, so I joined them. The performance was really good. It was frustrating me that I couldn't tell what he was doing, though. He did some card tricks which originally had me thinking he was storing them in his sleeves, until I realized his sleeves were rolled up. The connected ring trick was performed, switching the places of a wine glass and beer, and he also performed a very interesting dance with balloons during which he turned them into an umbrella.

He was also very entertaining. I couldn't understand him and even I laughed a few times. This had something to do with the way he was so shamelessly dramatic about everything. There was even dramatic and relevant music playing in the background for most of the show.

All too soon, the show ended and we left to go to lunch. We met up with Okasan’s brother and his wife again, as well as her elder sister. The meal itself actually took about two hours, because it was one of those ones with multiple courses. One of the courses was a soup that tasted pretty good until I saw the chunks of what I’m pretty sure was clam.

Now let’s get something straight, I don’t dislike clam. I only dislike it when I start thinking of the guts still floating around inside of it. And the thing about these chunks of clam was that they looked really suspicious. One was very long tube-like; another had other different colored blobs stuck to it. I decided that since there were only about three pieces, I’d just eat the rest of the soup around them, leave them in the bottom and hope no one noticed.

The next piece of food that weirded me out a little was the entire shrimp. It arrived in front me eyes and all. I stared at it for a moment, hoping that I wasn't expected to eat the guts. (As mentioned prior, the idea of eating guts makes me want to puke). While everyone else was distracted with eating, I prodded its legs with a chopstick. Is it just me, or does the food get served with more limbs attached the fancier the restaurant gets?

After a careful observation of everyone else, I concluded that the proper way to eat it was just to cut off the tail and eat that. The shrimp tail itself tasted great, I just wish I hadn't had to deal with the rest of the shrimp watching me eat it.

The zoo was our next calling.

I went in super excited about seeing the big cats. I love big cats. And the experience was made even more exciting by the fact that it was raining and I got to use an umbrella. (For some reason, this is sometimes fun to me). They had the following big cats at the zoo: One tiger, two lions (a male and a female), two panthers, a jaguar, and a snow leopard. I would have taken pictures, except my camera had run out of battery earlier that day. This was also the reason that I didn't take videos of the magician’s performance.

We got there just in time to watch them feed the lions and tiger. They let the cats into separate rooms in the back, and you can gather there to watch them eat. I sort of wondered how the animals felt about having an audience to observe their clumsy eating habits, but none of them seemed to care. The tiger even lay down afterwards and casually groomed a claw as thick as my thumb.

When we were leaving, I stopped in the gift store and bought a stuffed tiger. It has very soft fur and has an adorable face. I think it’s one of those animals where when you purchase the stuffed animal, some of the money from the purchase goes towards saving that species. Yay for me! Savior of the tiger species over here.

Granted, I’m not sure this is actually the case, as the tags are all in Japanese. But my psychic powers tell me this is the case, and my intuition hasn't steered me wrong yet. (It’s just often too vague to be useful). Plus, one of the tags does say: WILD LIFE ANIMALS- SAVE THE EARTH.

This seems like a pretty clear indication to me.

The long day came to a conclusion after dinner with a friend of Otosan’s and Okasan’s who is a graduate from my school from ten years ago. She’s an English teacher in Japan now. Up until this point, I hadn't really realized how much I missed having a conversation face-to-face with someone who spoke English fluently. (No offense family, but Skype just isn't the same, you know?) She was quite funny I thought, and we talked quite a bit once the initial awkwardness had passed.

Lesson of the day: If your high-quality stuffed-animal still seems to cost more than strikes you as logical, this is probably because you are being handed on a silver platter the opportunity to single-handedly end world hunger.

For the tigers.