I was so so excited to go to the zoo! Seriously, I was grinning the entire time.

Entering the zoo. It was set back from the roads, surrounded by gorgeous mountains. Through a couple of hills you had nice view of civilization and the water.

These are meerkats, the Team Zissou of the animal world. They had a big compound where they dug their little meerkat tunnels. Most of the time they were lounging around and mugging for photos.

Giraffe! Giraffe! At feeding time for the giraffe, who gets to feed him? YOU DO!

There was just a guy with some leafy branches, and a bucket full of carrots and apple slices. All the parents were dangling their small children over the fence so they could feed the giraffe.

This is my friend Ada. OF COURSE we fed the giraffe, are you kidding? We fed him several times, because we were so amazed and it was so cute, we couldn’t leave, so the zookeeper kept giving us more carrots.

I got giraffe slobber on my hand. He was adorable, with this nice velvety nose and gobbling lips and happy face. Maybe I want to be a zookeeper instead of a teacher…

Or an ELEPHANT MAHOUT!! YES!! The elephant looked really bored and his pen was pretty meh. His trunk was really neat, and the baggy skin and his floppy ears. Ohhhh elephant, you are so amazing…

On to the animals I had never seen before…

This is a short-tail Asian Otter. It looks like a regular otter, really. They make little cat noises.

This is a Japanese Lesser Panda! Also called a Red Panda, I think. It was so fluffy and adorable. It moved a bit like a monkey, but was built like a small foxy bear.

This is tanuki! Raccoon dogs. When they stand up, they have long legs like a dog. Now I know what they look like… they’re a lot bigger than I thought! I was thinking something gopher-sized, but these are truly as big as a small dog.

Oh, and there were also spider monkeys.

…ON MY HEAD!!

Tokushima Zoo, while having some depressing elements such as the overheating polar bears and the manic chimp, definitely gets a thumbs-up in my book.