Golden Week at the Zoo

Ahh, you have to love Golden Week in Japan. A week of holidays without the huge crowds around Tokyo coz everyone goes back to their hometowns...unless you are stupid enough to try going to the country to do anything amusing. Like going to a country zoo famous for it's Australian animals; koalas, kangaroos wombats what-have-you. So that was my day. After getting up at 7 to catch the train to Lisa's Grandma's place to change to the car, we found ourselves on the open road travelling at..eh..5 kmph...for the entire trip to the country zoo. Arriving at 1 pm we were confronted by a long line of cars trying to enter the pitifully inadequate car park so were forced to use the makeshift ones which were empty fields sprayed with white parking lines by the locals who charged 10 bucks to get bogged down in them. Old granny's abounded with their aprons and scraps of cardboard with 700 yen scrawled in texta across them. Wallets a little lighter, we proceeded to bush-bash our way back to the road and the zoo.
Ok, it was a beautiful day and the zoo was big enough to accommodate the large holiday influx so I can't winge too much. We brought a picnic and found a nice tree to sit under but Lisa only had eyes for the crappy kiosk with cheap faded plastic toys and the smell of old hot dogs.
So after lunch we decide to look at the Koala enclosure, promised to be a whollistic sensory experience of Australia. We were then presented with the 200 meter long 'line#1' of people waiting to enter.(see picture). You can imagine me waiting over an hour to see some Aussie fauna can't you? Remembering that the native animals section is the ENTRY LEVEL section at the Melbourne zoo.
OK, skip the Aussie animals, lets check out the 'cows-you-can-milk' and the 'various small animals-you-can-hold'. Oh no, we have to wait until 3.30 for those as they are done in shifts. We wait. Then we go up the hill to see the CYCM's and are presented with 'line #2', many kids waiting to grab a teet. We wait, we grab teet and proceed to 'line #3' which was cryptically spiral as it writhed about the assigned VSAYCH sector. Pushing our way through we secure a chick for Lisa (her favourites) and watch her enjoy squeezing it of it's vital essence. If only she could have seen a game of 'chick golf' as played by one Ben Gee.
Anyway, after that and a few trips to the famous Japanese open urinals, meaning they have a direct line of sight to the most crowded thoroughfare (Stage fright never felt so awkward) I proceeded to go over the photos I had taken for the day and realised most of them were of the rediculous crowds for the most mundane activities it has ever been my pleasure to witness. Have a nice golden week everyone.
Line to see the Koala's
Spiral line to see the VSAYCH's
Wavy line to see the CYCM. Similar to the line to the H2WHOOW at splash mountain. And one tired looking cow.
Evil scraggy goat that kept hassling me for food in the VSAYCH quadrant.