As the date of my trip is rapidly approaching (this time next week I'll be aboard my flight!) I've got a few manic last minute thoughts/questions.
Zoorasia: Since this is technically a business trip, my manager will be accompanying me on this day, I guess to make sure I'm acquainted with the public transport system. I don't mind, but I'm thinking I might wind up skipping the African section of the zoo to keep from dragging him through too much of it. This would be a relatively minor loss, considering every priority species is found in the western portion of the zoo, and I could very easily return here next year... plus I want to make sure I have plenty of time at Shibuya Parco before it closes, which I intend to visit afterward (and unfortunately it couldn't be scheduled for any other time, because there's an exhibition and pop-up shop for the Mother game series that I am
very eager to visit, which ends two days later).
Tama: I genuinely have no idea how to traverse this zoo. Every time I look at the map, I come up with a different route that seems most sensible. Again, the African section is my lowest priority here (all of the species common in Japanese African sections are plentiful in the US as well), but I still intend to check it out.
Tasmanian devils, Japanese weasel, and Japanese giant flying squirrel are my top priority here. I've heard that the best time to have a chance of seeing the squirrel is just before closing, but how about the weasel? And the crepuscular Tasmanian devils? Should I perhaps head straight for them as soon as I arrive in the morning, or would the end of the day be best here as well?
Is there anything of note in this area below? Obviously no animals, but it looks like excessive walking for no real payoff. At a glance, it seems like it would make more sense to circle back after seeing the wolves, and treat the birds at the bottom as a dead end on the way in or out.
Ueno: This one seems pretty straightforward, I just need to make sure to brush up on which species are in the nocturnal house and which are in the small mammal house and proceed accordingly. The pangolin, tarsier, slow loris, and brush turkey (which I have now missed at two American zoos) are my top priorities here, so if anyone has suggestions for their most active hours, I'm all ears.
Saitama: Even more straightforward. I don't think I have a single question about this one. As a side note, I was a bit confused as to why both Saitama and Zoorasia's maps show their bush dogs doing a handstand.
I thought at first that they were using the same asset library and they had stylized the images to fit the rest of their map, but they've very clearly different images. Turns out this is how female bush dogs mark their territory. Maybe this is well known, but I'd never heard of it before, and it's sort of funny that both of these zoos have honed in on this behavior enough to represent it on their maps of all things.
Inokashira Park: I asked in the zoo-specific thread yesterday, but I'll ask here as well in case anyone checks this thread but not that one. Does the zoo still have tanukis? They're absent from the zoo's current map. Aside from that, since this won't be a full-day zoo like Tama or Ueno might be, I'm not going to worry too much about figuring out best viewing hours. But for posterity, my priority species here are the masked palm civets and Japanese martens.
