Winter Vacation Part 4: Cafe Little Zoo

After getting back to Narita Airport, we still had several hours to kill before our night bus back to Aomori. We wanted to do something interesting to pass the time, so we got on the Keisei train and alighted at a stop called Ookubo, about halfway to Tokyo. It's a small suburban area without much hustle or bustle, but we were here to visit a place called Cafe Little Zoo.

Japan has plenty of places dubbed "cat cafes". Customers pay for drinks and snacks, but stay to hang around and play with the cafe's resident friendly felines. Most apartments in the heavily residential areas don't allow pets, so this is a way for people to get some animal contact without owning a pet themselves. Cat cafes sound cute and fun, but Kristin and I were in the mood for something a little more... adventurous. After a little bit of research, we found Cafe Little Zoo.

Cats are a little commonplace, so Cafe Little Zoo has an exciting array of more rare pets. They've got plenty of birds of prey, varying from falcons, hawks, eagles, and especially owls. There is also a good selection of reptiles, like snakes, lizards, turtles, and tortoises.

Apart from the larger birds of prey, pretty much any of the animals can be touched. There is a line-up on the patio with the bigger owls, while the smaller owls are kept on a post indoors. We had plenty of up-close-and-personal time with the birds, even though one of the horned owls got a bit nippy.

The snakes are fair game too. The shop-tenders pulled some of them out of their pens and handed them out to the few customers in the store. We started out with an adorable puppy-faced python, and then traded with the other customers for a red corn snake. This guy particularly liked the darkness of my sleeve and wormed its way up. I had to take off many layers to fish him back out.

The more aquatic animals, like their gigantic spiny turtle and tiny salamanders, are best left in their cages, but we still managed to get a good look at them. The other larger birds of prey, like the red-tailed hawk and crown eagle, cannot be touched by customers for obvious reasons, but we were able to see them being fed tiny quail carcasses. It was awe-inspiring, watching the giant noisy bird right in front of us tear into the meat, thrashing flesh about and snapping through the little bones with ease.

Like most animal cafes, the snacks are rather small and expensive, but worth it for the experience. My only real complaint about the cafe is that the handlers tend to light up their cigs right there in the store, so it's not particularly non-smoker friendly. We spent about 2 hours here playing with the animals before heading back towards Tokyo to get an actual dinner.

Speaking of actual dinners, we ate at a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Vege Herb Saga. The menu was extensive, and I had no idea what half the stuff was. Nonetheless, the food was amazing and the staff were nice enough to offer us some milk tea and sit down to have a chat (even though most of them don't really speak Japanese nor English). After getting stuffed up with masala dosa, something-or-other curry, chapati, and chutney, we boarded our night bus and ended our fun second winter vacation in Japan.

Winter Vacation Part 3: Satsuma Peninsula

After getting back from Yakushima, we had an extra day to explore in Kagoshima. We rented a car and headed south away from the city into the Satsuma Peninsula.

Map of Satsuma

Satsuma peninsula, like most of the rest of Kyushu, has a lot of volcanic activity. It's sparsely populated, except for a few small towns. The main attraction is a town called Ibusuki, where the volcanic activity manifests in the form of hot sand. Here, you can take a "sand bath."

Unlike a normal bath, you take a sand bath clothed in a thin yukata robe. We donned the provided clothing and took a chilly walk down a path to the beach. On the beach, there are eaves set up to shield from the wind and sun. In these dark pits, people lie in the coarse sand and are buried by facility employees. The more sand they pile on you, the hotter it gets!

Sand bath (not my picture)

The yukata are worn to protect you from contact burns, as the sand can feel particularly hot on bare skin. My exposed heels in particular were getting pretty scorched, so I pushed them out into the open air for relief.

After you've had your fill of warm sand, you can head back into the facility to wash off all the sand and have a soak in a real bath. As I relaxed, I marveled at the signs posted around the bathhouse, depicting a square-faced blond-haired blue-eyed man with a nose the size of a traffic cone performing acts against bathing etiquette. Overall, it was a nice bath despite the somewhat racists and degrading informatory signs.

In town, we ate lunch at a nice little restaurant which served delicious kuro-buta sukiyaki as well as yummy fried sweet potatoes. Japanese sweet potatoes, or "satsuma-imo", are named after this place after all.

Next, we drove even further south to see Kaimon-dake, the beautifully conical volcano that juts out from the southern tip of Kyushu.

What a nice cone! (also not my picture)

Besides being nice to look at, there isn't much to do here but hike. There's a small camping area halfway up where you can rent cabins or ride an extremely slow go-cart down a narrow and uneventfully straight path. There are also signs that there USED to be an exciting roller slide that thundered its way down the mountain, although I'm afraid that it is no more. We gave up on looking for things to do and headed back towards the city.

And finally, it was time to head back home. But first, we had one more stop in Tokyo for some unfinished business.