Fuju Safari Park

I woke up in the place I went to sleep in. Always a good start.

It was early, most of the other eleven or so occupants of the hostel room were still asleep or stirring but I had to get up. That day I had to meet Yang and Kizuna and travel with them to Nagoya, my next city, with a stop at Fuji Safari park on the way.

There are some things you notice when you walk down the street with a heavy backpack. Mostly this is chewing gum as you tread slowly with eyes down. That morning though I found the first Lego shop I had ever seen in Japan. I didn’t go in, I don’t go in the English ones. It’s just nice to know where you can get emergency Lego from, say if you need to build a bridge for some ants.

We met in Otemachi station, part of the huge labyrinth of Tokyo station. We had to change trains a few times to get to Fuji Safari and I had no idea where we were, but I was happy to be ignorant. We eventually arrived at a small train station in a small town somewhere in Japan. And then we had to wait for a bus.

The bus came, we got on and then somehow Yang and Kizuna realised that we needed to get on another bus so they asked the driver. The driver told us to get out at the next bus stop and showed us the bus we had to get on, which was about to leave. Yang and Kizuna were all smiles as we ran to our final bus which took us high into the pine tree covered mountains of wherever we were.

Soon the trees cleared and we found a Safari Park, not like in Jurassic Park where there’s suddenly a wide vista of exotic vegetation and exotic animals living in harmony: it was a carpark and a ticket shop.

In buying tickets we managed to break the ticket machine. Our simple error was inserting a plastic card somewhere it was not designed to go. Somebody came with a big pair of keys and unlocked the ticket machine and pulled out the card with some pliers.

When we had tickets we waited for the next tour wondering which bus would be our chariot through the animal kingdom.


It was the elephant bus.

The driver and tour guide was a witty fellow, I could tell by the way everyone kept laughing. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but I pretended that I did so as not to put him off.

There was a chance to feed some of the animals, you could buy food and feed-from-a-safe-distance tongs. This is Yang and Kizuna on the bus.


First animals up were bears but taking pictures of a moving animal from a moving bus through bars is quite difficult. I had never been that close to bears before and I learnt that they make a wailing nasal noise.

This bear before food.


This bear being given food.


Another bear that didn’t want food.


A lion


Three lions


Kizuna feeding a lion


A lion giving us the high fives, or trying to claw us through the bars.


A mummy lion and daddy lion.


Lions in a tree


Lions on a rock


This tiger wants to eat you.


Oh you don’t really care do you.


It’s just lots of bad pictures of animals.


A waste of the Internet.


But here’s two animals you don't expect together.


And what’s this?


It’s one of these, licking a tree.


And a goat up a tree.


A holy goat


Mountain goats


Yep


Ok that’s all the pictures of animals (that may be a lie).

When we were getting off the tour bus Kizuna tried to make conversation with the tour guide, but he was apparently very shy when not talking about animals.

We went for lunch and then to the Neko House, the house of cats.

Unlike other cat places I had been to in Japan this was actually like a house. There were sofas, bookcases, tables and ornate cabinets. It looked like the house of a cat obsessed spinster with an amazing capacity for cleaning.

There were cats and furniture everywhere, of all different breeds. Here is a one ear down kind of cat on a cabinet.


More cats, more furniture. The mirror reminds me of the one out of Ringu.


I think that animals, in general, don’t really like people, which is something that disappoints a lot of people a lot of the time. Domesticated animals like people, but only to a certain extent. When you go to a place full of cats you often get the feeling of being rejected. It goes like this:

See available cat
Creep up to cat slowly with hand outstretched
Cat sniffs hand
Stroke cat gently on its back
Stroke cat gently on the top of head
Cat runs away
Find new cat

And so it goes on with the sense of rejection and betrayal building throughout the day.

But what you can do is go for a sleeping cat and sit next to it and gradually start stroking it, slowly building up a trust and rapport with the cat so that it eventually doesn’t mind you being there. It doesn’t really want you there either, it just doesn’t mind and that is as good as you can get.

On the other hand it can be much worse. Kizuna was given a bleeding cut by one of the cats and that’s just the way it goes, that’s what we pay for. To be rejected and knifed by cute animals.

We were in the house of cats for ages. So long that it started to get cold and I started to sneeze. I had only dressed for the warm weather, my arms were bare and I had no other clothes. There was no heating in the cat house, it was actually quite drafty and I walked around trying to find the warmest place and stop sneezing. The staff looked at me worriedly, I smiled and tried not to look like I had allergies.

So I was happy when we left and made our way back to the station.

The original plan had been that we would all go to Nagoya from Fuji Safari park, but Yang and Kizuna changed their minds. They wanted to go back to Tokyo but felt guilty for letting me down, I had a hotel room booked in Nagoya for the night.

Yang offered to pay for a hotel room in Tokyo for me and help me get a coach ticket the next day. He was earning big money from working night shifts in the Night Owl convenience store in Cairns. I accepted the offer and we got on a shinkansen back the way we had come.

Last year I used to work in two schools. Tomioka was my main school four days a week but every Thursday I would teach in a nearby school, Maihama. This was quite a challenge because I had to prepare lessons for two schools, and also the Maihama class were first year kids - genital attacks were frequent.

I used to get the train to Urayasu station and then take a bus to the school. Between the train station and bus stop was a short alleyway with lots of bikes and at the end of if it was a hotel. I would always see people eating breakfast in front of the large windows of the first floor and feel so envious. I was making my way to a day I had been dreading all week and my eyes would watch hungrily those relaxed figures eating their breakfast above us suited minions heading off to work.

But that was the very hotel we stayed in, with a free breakfast too. I was dead pleased about that.

It was the nicest hotel room I had yet stayed in, and I was becoming quite a connoisseur. Kizuna had to go back to the guesthouse to sort some things out. Yang and I talked in my room for a while. He remembered quite late into the evening that he needed to call Kizuna’s parents for some reason.

Even though I couldn’t really catch what he was saying he was exuding politeness. He was walking around the room talking to Kizuna’s mum, physically bowing to her even though she was miles away. This is a common phenomena in Japan but proved how well he had mastered the culture.

Kizuna came back to the hotel with some sweets. I remembered that one of the reasons we had gone to Fuji Safari was to see Mount Fuji, but during the day we hadn‘t seen it once. This was typical for my experience in Japan, I had been to the top of so many buildings that claimed you could see Fuji but it was always too cloudy.

Kizuna listened to my comment, looked around nervously and then whispered to me that there is no Mount Fuji, it is just a lie to sell post cards and calendars. She said that I have to not tell anyone and that when I leave Japan they will ask me, “so do you believe in Mount Fuji?” and I have to say, “Yes” otherwise I won’t be allowed to leave.

Ahh, I thought, that explains it.