Tama Zoo and 1 love Bob.

Sorry for the slight lapse in blogging but the Japanese school system enjoys inflicting frequent exams upon the students. Anyway, last weekend had a free trip to the zoo! I was asked to help out with a school trip for some Japanese kids learning English, from about 3 to 7 years old. In return I got a free trip to the zoo, and since my brief was basically 1. make sure the kids don’t eaten by lions (although they did try and climb over the fence into the tiger enclosure, which if it had been bothered could have probably jumped out of the enclosure anyway), 2. make sure the kids don’t eat the lions, 3. take pictures of the kids, it was definitely worth it. Also the Japanese kids are so cute and surprisingly well behaved, although perhaps that was because there were some big scary foreigners talking to them in English.

And those hats ARE cool.

After an action packed Saturday at the zoo it was of course time to relax a bit on Sunday by going, of course, to the Jamaican festival that was taking place in Yoyogi park near Shibuya in central Tokyo. The sun was once again shining and the weather was sweet and it was a really fun festival to go to even. It was of course Japanified somewhat and whilst there wasn’t any marijuana in sight (drugs are a big no no in Japan and they even kicked the Beatles out during their tour for possession) there were of course plenty of drunk Japanese staggering around. There is also something rather strange about seeing Japanese Rastafarians wandering around with dreadlocks half way down their back. There was basically a large market area selling different food and genuine Jamaican memorabilia and a main stage. The stage was more a shrine to Bob Marley though and at least half the music played was his, although I do have to say he never came up with anything quite like ‘Ziggy Wiggy Love’ (I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called) and ‘Girigiri, gorogoro, guragura, gorogoro’ or at least something very much like that. If you try and sing that to the tune Big Ben makes when it sounds the hour you will get the idea and the song was in fact about classes at school where they use this tune as the school bell to signal the start and end of class. Don’t ask me why. Ya man…