Best Zoo Experience Ever!

Today we ventured out to the Morioka City Zoo. We didn’t have high hopes for the zoo, but had seen photos of a decent playground there, so we figured we’d check it out. We took the bus (always an adventure trying to figure out bus routes in any country) out of the city and up a mountain (I’m so glad we didn’t try to bike this) to the zoo. The bus trip cost about $4 and the zoo entrance was ~$5 for adults with kids under 15 are FREE.

The zoo is located on a heavily forested hillside, so there is lots of shade and nice wooded paths. As soon as you walk in the gate you are faced with a huge Japanese macaque pen.

Monkeys always seem so human to me. It was fun watching them.

They have a decent assortment of Japanese animals and then branch out by continent. Between Japan and North America, they have a nice "run with the sheep & goats" section on domestic farm animals. As always, Catie went for the goats.

If watching the animals wasn't enough, they were also handing out bug nets in a variety of places. Mushi (bug) hunting is big in Japan right now and they even had a person set up to identify your catch and sell you a little cage to take it home with you.

on the hunt for water mushi

About halfway through the zoo, you come to the turn off for the playground. The playground is pretty spectacular for the 7-10 year old set, but it was a bit much for Catie. We spent some time there- the incredibly long rolling slide was pretty cool, but it was hot  and sunny, so we walked back into the zoo proper for lunch and cold drinks.

Aside from the kind of scary Voltron thing, the playground was pretty nice

After lunch we walked through the North American, then Australian, and finally African animal sections. The real WOW occurred at the elephant pen. A zookeeper drove up with a basket of apples on the back of his scooter. He proceeded to impale an apple on the end of a long stick, and then called a little girl over to hold the stick over the moat and FEED THE ELEPHANT. A few other kids fed the elephant and then he beckoned Catie over and she too got to give the elephant an apple.

happy elephant, happy Catie

A little while later we ran into the same zookeeper at the giraffe and ostrich pen. This time he had a box of leafy twigs and Catie got to FEED THE GIRAFFE…3 times!!!

When is the last time you got to feed the animals at a regular zoo? I know there are places for that, like Parc Safari, but not your regular old city zoo. At least not without paying for your "penguin experience" etc. So for $10, our family of 3 got to visit a pretty nice zoo and Catie got to run around with some goats, play on a decent playground, and feed an elephant and a giraffe- not a bad day!