New Alpaca at Ueno Zoo

Do you know what an アルパカ (alpaca) is?

It’s a South American animal that looks alot like a llama.

They also look kinda similar to that giant flying doglike character in the ’80s movie “The Never Ending Story“.

From the movie "The Never Ending Story".

 

Earlier this year, 「上野動物園」 (Ueno Zoo) in Tokyo got a brown female アルパカ (alpaca) named 「モコ」 (“Moko“).

「モコちゃん」 (“Moko“) was alone, so a few weeks ago 「上野動物園」 (Ueno Zoo) got another female アルパカ (alpaca) to live in the same pen as 「モコ」 (“Moko“).

This new アルパカ (alpaca) is white.

Photo: © Tokyo Zoological Park Society

 

The zoo asked the public to vote on a name for this new アルパカ (alpaca).

The results of the vote were:

「灯」 (“Akari“) got 216 votes,

「ポコ」 (“Poko“) got 198 votes,

「フゥ」 (“Fuu“) got 129 votes, and

「ユラ」 (“Yura“) got 112votes.

So 「モコ」 (Moko)’s new roommate is 「灯」 (Akari)…it means “light” (as opposed to “dark”).

「モコ」 (Moko), brown and 「灯」 (Akari), white(Photos: © Tokyo Zoological Park Society)

Photos: © Tokyo Zoological Park Society

 

アルパカ (alpaca) are kinda cute, don’t you think?

If you want to see them, you can visit them at 「上野動物園」 (Ueno Zoo) in Tokyo.

料理のサンプル

日本のレストランのショーウインドーには、料理のサンプルおいてあります。でも本物ではありません。本物に似せて作った物です。本物とそくっりですね。お客はメニューで注文してもどんな料理がくるか分かりません。これなら安心ですよね。

Can you read the Japanese above?

It means:

“Restaurants in Japan have a show window with sample food. They’re not real, though. They’re fakes made to look like the actual items. They’re very realistic. It helps customers who don’t know what to order. This can be quite a relief, don’t you agree?”

Besides this, restaurants in Japan usually have photos of each item in the menu itself.
Of course this helps foreign visitors who can’t read Japanese, but it’s also helpful to those of us who can read the menu because it’s easy to decide what you want to eat when you can see the menu items rather than imagining them.

Do restaurants in your country have a system like this?

The Decade’s Most Iconic Images

If you click here you go visit a post on the “Huffington Post” site about the Most Iconic Images of 2000 – 2009.

I have never visited the Huffington Post site before so I’m not sure what the site is about…but the photos on that post brought back alot of memories of some major news events of the past ten years (not all of them good, unfortunately).

Here are a few images from that post:

The late Michael Jackson hanging his infant son over a railing; 2002 Nov 19

Former U.S. President Bush declaring the Iraq War as "Mission Accomplished"; 2003 May 1

Prisioner abuse at the Abu Ghaib Prison; 2003

The crash landing into the Hudson River that saved all passengers onboard; 2009 January 15