A few News items

A few stories from the recent news that I found interesting…

• A アシカ (sea lion) named 「ななみ」 (“Nanami”) at a zoo in 愛媛県 (Ehime, Japan) was unable to compete for food with the other sea lions in her pen. So she began leaping over three meters (9 feet) and holding onto the wall to eat fish held by the zoo’s visitors.

  She has become a very popular attraction.

  

  (Photo from the Japan Times).

• There was an explosion in a warehouse in 東京都渋谷区 (Shibuya, Tokyo) last Wednesday. It was initially reported that the owner of the place escaped the burning building…but his wife and mother died inside the building.

  It was reported yesterday that the man didn’t escape on his own. He was rescued from the building by a famous Iranian celebrity* who happened to be nearby. (*His name is Rahim Arvanaghi, commonly known as “Randy Muscle“, and he’s famous in Japan).

  He ran into the burning building and pulled the man out. But he was unable to save the man’s wife or mother.

• The 2009 edition of the Michelin Restaurant Guide will be out soon. And once again, Tokyo has more four and five star restaurants than any other city in the world.

  As I mention in this post, Tokyo had the most stars in the 2008 edition as well.

  Tokyo is the capital where there are the most restaurants, more than 160,000, and also excellent cuisine.

  Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin director

The zoo…

As I mentioned in the post I wrote this morning (Click here to see it), the 上野動物園 (Ueno Zoo) offered free admission today. So my wife and daughters went there (I couldn’t go because I had to work…but they invited our eight-year-old niece who lives not too far from us to join them).

We expected it would be crowded there today, but it wasn’t too bad…probably because it was rainy for the past two days. But the weather was fine today.
They had a good time.

As I wasn’t there, my wife and daughters took all of these pictures.

Here’s the 北極熊 (Polar Bear):

And they happened to get to the アザラシ (sea lions) just in time to see two of them fighting:

The ゴリラ (gorilla) was wearing a tarp like a blanket.
Here he was picking his nose:

Another shot of him:

This is a バク (Tapir):

The Petting zoo portion of 上野動物園 (Ueno Zoo) has 鶏のメス (chickens), 鶏のオス (roosters), ヤギ (goats), 羊 (sheep), アヒル (ducks), and ネズミ (mice) (there used to be 豚 (pigs) there..but, it seems, they’ve been moved):

I like サイ (rhinoceros):

++++

上野動物園 (Ueno Zoo) is Japan’s first zoo. It opened on March 20, 1882.
It used to have パンダ (pandas), but the last one died in April 2008. China offered to lease more pandas to the zoo, but the Tokyo government decided the price was too steep. (You can read my post about the panda’s passing by clicking here.)