At the Inokashira zoo,

At the Inokashira zoo, we saw an old elephant and some squirrels.

The elephant was born in Thailand in 1947 and came to the zoo when she was 2 and a half. Japan's school children named her Hanako. At the advanced age of 53, she has no teeth (I guess elephant dentures are out of the question) her food is chopped up into small bits for her by the zookeepers. To amuse herself, Hanako paces her concrete playground incessantly and lifts her tail to emit bellows of gas. Visitors squeal though whether in delight or disgust I'm not sure.

The squirrels were much cuter. In Japanese they are called "risu" which is written with the kanji characters for chestnut and rat. Japanese squirrels are reddish grey and have tufted ears and bushy tails. About two dozen of them live the high life in the squirrel version of an aviary. The Inokashira zoo created a caged, wooded environment where people can enter and the squirrels run free. The little critters eat directly from children's hands and scurry overhead and underfoot. This was the most popular area of the zoo. Sad to say, it's difficult to find squirrels running wild in Tokyo; even the parks don't seem to have much wildlife except for crows.

The zoo has other animals, of course. The unique Japanese tanuki, lots of beautiful Japanese birds, some wild boar and a handful of imported treasures. But for me, the highlights were Hanako and the squirrels.