monkey fun

some raccoons await some food to be dropped
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With a midweek national holiday on the cards, not quite long enough to go anywhere very far away, and wanting to catch up with Kate who was visiting, Karen and I joined forces with Matt, Nick, Mark and Kate and went to the 'Bio Park' in the Nagasaki prefecture (close to Huis Ten Bosch, which is a replica Dutch town).  We knew little of what to expect as the website was in Japanese, and we didn't know anyone who had been there.  However I can say with 100% confidence the Bio Park kick's ass!  A definite recommendation for anyone who finds themselves in the Sasebo area with some time to kill.

a pink flower in the butterfly house
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Bio Park is more a petting zoo than a regular zoo, but that doesn't mean the animals are less impressive than most zoo's, just that it's a very hands on zoo and from what we could tell all the animals seemed to be housed in very decent enclosures.  Unlike many zoo's I have been to where the pathways are a maze and crisscross over one another leaving you wondering which animals to head to next, the Bio Park is laid out on a pathway you follow around that flows around the animals perfectly.  Many of the animals are "let loose" in their pens to walk around the "visitors" (the visitors being people).  Kids get to pet animals ranging from goats, flamingos and wallabies, to some I had never seen before and can't remember the names of!

monkeys flew from branch to branch to human to branch

this bat was a little excited to see us
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The Bio Park had two "zoo highlights" for me.  Firstly, we got to feed the rhino's!  I know, how cool is that?!

Secondly, and this one is better, we went into a monkey enclosure, in which monkeys flew from branch to branch to human to branch ... Basically, the monkeys would leap anywhere they pleased, and if you wanted to please them all you had to do was purchase a little capsule containing some live maggots, stand still with the capsule in you hand and a nearby monkey was only a second away from jumping onto your shoulders to investigate and await you opening the yummy treat for them.  It was so so awesome!  All six of us spent a good twenty minutes in there enjoying the sensation of having monkeys crawling all over us, so novel, but so fun.  They were so clever too, you couldn't trick them with an empty capsule by closing it and pretending you had just bought it, they knew better!  And watching their little hands scoop out the food and try to open the capsules was just too cute.  As Matt pointed out, "they're like babies hands, but they know how to use them!"

some beavers
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There were a load of other animals housed at the Bio Park too, I've only touched on some of my favourites.  Basically, we stumbled upon a perfect relaxed spring day outing, and had ourselves a great Wednesday in Japan.