The animals went in two by two, hurrah

Today I went to Asa Zoological Gardens just north of Hiroshima City centre. (Here is the English page with times and travel info.) Highlights included baboon mountain (which is, as its name implies, a mountain with baboons on it), a giant turtle, two turtles in the same enclosure trying desperately to take advantage of a third, meerkats racing around their holey meerkat village, two baby meerkats trying to show off and falling off a log in the process, a rat kangaroo (which genuinely does look like a cross between a rat and a kangaroo) hopping around, a sugar glider gliding, an enormous, lumbering elephant having lunch, the wonderfully drawn signs around the park warning and informing visitors about the animals, like these gems:

Their faces say it all really

Pull our rabbits' ears and we'll pull your childrens'. At least
that's what I assume it says...

The poor little fella on the bottom right makes me sad

This child is either crying because he got his hand bitten or the
tiger peed on him. If only I read Japanese I'd know

accidently taking a photo of a parrot that looks like it has a man's head (thanks to Brian for spotting this):

and finally the looks on the faces of the Japanese people strolling by when I did this:

Lowlights of the day included the smell from baboon mountain, the depressingly small enclosures that some of the animals lived in, the fact that I got sunburned even though I had sun screen in my bag (remembered to bring it, forgot to put it on. Doh!), and a bird in one of the bird enclosures that sounded like a dog's squeaky toy that would not shut the hell up. I bet the other birds hated him. Here is a video so that you may see what I mean: