Asahiyama Zoo

Here's a picture I just got of Aaron dressed as Santa at the Komu in December. Thought y'all might enjoy it.

Students in Nishiokoppe have about three weeks of no classes during their Winter Break. During this time, as I have mentioned before, teachers are expected to work in some capacity. My job during these days has been to sit at my desk here at the Yakuba and amuse myself with origami, re-working some of the curriculum, writing blog posts, and reading News of the Weird online. However, I did in fact use some holiday time and have just returned from having over one week off. January 2nd through the 4th was a holiday anyway, so all I needed to do was take off Friday. Having decided it was high time for us to have a trip, we planned to return to Asahikawa on the 4th for an overnight stay.

With the help of my friend downstairs, Fusae, I was able to reserve a traditional style Japanese room in a downtown hotel. I had been doing some research, but finding websites in readable English was proving difficult. Finally, I admitted I needed help. I’m glad I asked! Fusae went right to the Japanese website for the hotel I had been looking at and discovered they had a package deal for families wanting to stay in Asahikawa overnight and visit the local zoo. We were able to get the room (apparently traditional rooms are more expensive), breakfast, and zoo tickets for about 14,000 yen. That’s less than $140. Not bad!

We loaded up with extra layers of clothing and long underwear, preparing for a cold, cold day out of doors. The temperature here has been hovering near –20 to –15 C, which is around zero degrees Fahrenheit. The situation was made more challenging by the fact that Holt had entered the realm of potty training for good as of his third birthday. I had been building his anticipation and purchased Thomas the Tank Engine briefs in celebration of this momentous event. Unfortunately, we quickly went through four pairs of underwear on the first day. Ever determined, though, I packed six pairs of pants/underwear, absolutely refusing to return to diapers even for the trip.

The drive to Asahikawa was lovely, with blue skies and dry underwear. An already pleasant situation was improved with a pit stop at Colin’s house in Shibetsu, about an hour out of Asahikawa and 90 minutes from Nishiokoppe. Being single and having a decent salary, Colin had acquired many electronic toys, one of which he no longer needed and was passing along to us: an MP3 transmitter. By plugging this little jewel into our MP3 player, we could now listen to music using our car radio (we have no CD or tape player in the car – only a radio which is pretty useless here in the country). How lovely to have music with which we could drown out the bickering of our little darling boys. Two and a half hours is a long time in the car for anyone under the age of 10, I think.

We arrived in Asahikawa with no problem, and after a bit of frantic circling were finally able to locate our hotel. The receptionist knew immediately which reservation we were and demonstrated a surprising amount of English. We were almost to our room when Holt finally had his first accident of the day. I thought he did pretty well, though! The room was lovely, complete with tatami floors and futon to sleep on. I wanted the traditional room because it provides more room for the boys to tromp around in.

Entryway to our room
View of room with futons
View of room, 2

After a simple lunch and an unwilling nap, we set out in search of the City of Gold; or perhaps I should be honest and say the Shop of Starbucks. I had heard that there was a huge mall in Asahikawa, which contained a Starbucks. With directions from our ever-so-friendly receptionist, Aaron easily navigated his way to Aeon, the biggest mall I have seen since being in Texas this summer. The lights and noises quickly overwhelmed us. The boys were almost immediately over-stimulated and began to practically run circles around us. Fortunately, we managed to rein them in a bit as we began to explore.

I nearly jumped for joy when I spied the Starbucks on the lower level. Ridge and Holt clamored for ‘steamers’ (steamed milk with vanilla syrup), and Aaron went off to procure our java. Afterwards, I then stumbled across the western food store Colin had been telling me about. I’ve never been so delighted to see Spam and cans of pork –and-beans. I didn’t buy any, but they were a familiar sight. I did, however, spend a ridiculous amount of money on some Thai and Mexican food – about 7,000 yen worth.

Exhausted, we finally returned to our hotel room well after 9:00, and slept soundly until morning. Then we rose and dressed in our multiple layers to prepare for spending the day outside. Fortune was with us and again, we had beautiful blue skies.

The Asahiyama Zoo is purported to be one of the best zoos in Japan, if not the best. We had heard tales of the twice-daily penguin walks, the amazing polar bear enclosure, and unique seal exhibit. Overall, the zoo was nice enough, but I’m afraid that the Ft. Worth and San Antonio zoos have spoiled me.

Here is a photo of the entrance. The amusement park in the background is part of the zoo, but closed in the winter for obvious reasons.

Entrance to zoo

We arrived just in time for the first penguin walk, but had a very hard time getting a good view. Each day, the penguins are taken on a walk around the park in order that they might exercise a bit. Their path, as you can see, is lined with eager tourists waiting to catch a glimpse. In this photo, it might take you a minute to notice where the penguins are; there were not as many as I had expected, perhaps a dozen or so.

Penguin walk

After watching the penguins waddle by, we found the polar bear exhibit. “Crowded” seemed to be the word for the day, and we had an equally difficult time finding a good viewing place from which to watch the polar bear feeding time. The outside windows had ice frozen to them on the inner part, obscuring the view. On the inside of the building, there were so many people we could barely move. I took this as an opportunity to explain to my oldest son that there are times when it is okay to push your way past people, and I encouraged him to weasel his way up to the front so he could see. Reluctant at first, he soon became intrigued enough by the diving bears that he wormed his way up to the glass. This badly focused photo is of the bear swimming underwater as he chases the fish the handlers are throwing into the enclosure.

Swimming polar bear

We next turned our attention to the seal enclosure. Same story as before: we couldn’t see the feeding for all the other people. Inside, though, the display is arranged so you can watch the seals swimming around and through a vertical tube. The entire enclosure is designed to maximize the audience’s ability to view the animals swimming. These two photos are very out of focus. The seal was moving too fast through the tube, but I had to try. It was quite intoxicating to be able to see them up so close. Still, I was a little saddened by how small all the enclosures were.
Seal enclosure
Seal going down
Seal going up

We made our way around the rest of the zoo, trying to stay warm. Most enclosures were little more than fancy cages, unfortunately. Many of the cages were empty due to it being winter. I think they have a facility inside somewhere that allows them to over-winter animals that can’t handle the cold. Available for viewing, though, were some snow leopards, a black panther, a lion, a local variety of bear, deer, caribou, elk, a few kinds of birds, snow monkeys, and a few kinds of domesticated animals – including a dog on display and available for petting.

Black panther, out of focus
Standing below the leopards
Ridge, with Asahikawa in the background
Lots and lots of guinea pigs!


It was a good trip, and I’m glad that we went, but I confess it made me long for an American zoo.