Oops, sorry about the mistake postings in my blog. There is another blog I keep of current JET events in Toyama, and I accidently posted something from there to here. It might be fixed now if you look for it, so don't worry.

Last weekend we had a neat trip with Takemaru-san. We left around 9am in the morning, which is early for me on a Sunday. Then we went to the Toyama Family Park Zoo. It is located in the hills near Toyama. Much to Victoria's and my surprise, we just walked right in without paying. When we asked Takemaru-san why we didn't have to pay, he said he used to be the zoo director about ten years ago. I hadn't known that, so I was very impressed. Everyone seemed to know him who worked there and came up to say hello as we walked through the zoo.

The zoo is not very big, but it is pretty well done. There are some animals like the giraffe and zebra who should have had more room to run around in, but generally it was okay. Of course, they don't have the kind of space that the North Carolina Zoo has to house animals. Victoria said she thought it was her first time to see some of the animals in person, like zebras and giraffes. I thought this was surprising, because she loves giraffes a lot. They also had some Mongolian camels, lesser pandas, and a bunch of lemurs.

After the zoo, we went to a new restaurant nearby that had really good pizza. They actually cooked the pizzas in a wood-burning oven like you are supposed to do, according to Naples. The building the restaurant was in didn't look very Japanese. It looked more British or something.

Next we took a really long drive (nearly two hours) to Takayama City, in Gifu. Since we had both been there before, we didn't go into the city. Instead, we went to the mountains nearby where they had a museum that you could see Takayama's floats at. Takayama does a big float festival in the spring and the fall. They have massive floats that they push through the streets. Many of the floats have moving parts or puppet-like shows which people operate from inside them. Apparently the festival is amazing to see, and really crowded. However, it is also on a Wednesday or something silly, so you have to take vacation time to see it most years. In the museum, they keep some of the floats they use for the festival, and have some of the moving parts hooked up to computer control so you can watch them in the museum. The rest of the floats are kept in a museum in the city, that we saw one time we went with Ms. Iguchi. The other thing the museum had were giant taiko drums. one of the taiko drums is apparently the largest japanese drum in the world. It was big.

The best part about the trip was the drive up and back. We passed through a lot of areas where there is still snow, and the scenery of the mountains was just beautiful. I felt bad for Takemaru-san though, since he had to drive the whole time, and it was a long drive for a thirty minute visit to a museum.