Day 13 - Ueno Zoo & Puroland

I woke up for the morning feeling better than the previous day - a real accomplishment with a head cold. I now believe I was in some sort of euphoric haze where I willed away my illness so that I could have a great last day in Japan.

In specific, to head to Ueno Zoo, were there are some truly amazing animals. The first surprise of the day was the price. At 600 yen, the zoo is a very cheap day out. But when we arrived we were directed to a separate window where the attendant asked to see our passport. In the end, our tickets only cost us 480 yen each. We headed inside where we got to see the lovelies on display. Including two Giant Pandas, flamingos, red pandas, gorillas and a lot of native Japanese animals.

I guess the only note I have is that if you are used to Australian zoos, you may be a little disappointed. Ueno Zoo is closer to how Aussie zoos were about 20 years ago - lots of concrete and a good number of the enclosures need quite a bit of work. But all the animals seemed okay and the newer enclosures were fantastic - take for example, the gorillas and pandas. I guess, it is just a matter of them bring the zoo to a higher standard bit by bit. As it was there were a few enclosures that were closed for renovations. It seems to me that Australia is just a bit above in this area, but by no means does it mean that the Ueno Zoo isn't awesome.

Afterwards, we made the journey out to Puroland. It is a theme park put together by Sanrio - the creators of Hello Kitty. As you will see from my photos it is incredibly pretty and cute inside. There are however a couple of let downs. If you are going to go, I would suggest going in the morning instead of the afternoon as there were a few things that were shut down that we could not do because we were there later in the day. Also, you will want to pay for the full ticket. There isn't much to do inside without the rides, shows and other activities.

Well, aside from the shopping. We both bought a few really neat things - Hello Kitty things, but on the whole there weren't any specific items the we had not seen anywhere else, and really Hello Kitty is all over Japan - just walking into a 100 yen shop, you can get a whole heap of Hello Kitty stuff. The only other comment that I have is that it's a theme park that isn't really for adults. I would suggest that the target age group is 4 - 6. The little ones there seemed to be having a great time. At any rate, I was happy to go, happy to shop and take some photos.

We then started the trip back to our hotel. We did get a little side-tracked in Ueno with dinner at the Ueno hard rock cafe, but we made it home to start the arduous task of packing our suitcases.