Tennoji Zoo & Den Den Town (9 Nov Friday)

We abandoned our plan to go to Mino, outskirt of Osaka, famed for its autumn scenery. It wasn't "deep" autumn yet. So we poured through our maps and decided on Festival Gate, a theme park (again) not too far from where we stay. We arrived at Doubutsuenmae Station to find Festival Gate closed for renovation for 2 months! So we walked around the area....

This guy is a mascot of a restaurant.

We couldn't agree if he is a baby or an ugly grown up ;-)

Here papa is eating one of those popular snacks: Takoyaki or Octopus Ball

We chanced upon the zoo at the end of street. Only those over 15 years old need to pay. We thought it is a small zoo. But it is well maintained and it has all those popular zoo animals. It took us a good 4 hours to cover it!

The boys are wearing a T-shirt that says Samurai in Japanese.

We bought those yesterday in Nara.

Could you guess what this is?

Bird nests in an aviary

An elderly Japanese man volunteered to take this pix for us.

Papa was somewhere else (feeding our chips to a squirrel!!)

The real thing..

Thankfully not the real thing ;-)
There are many such bronze statues (?) all around the zoo.

On the left is an albino deer.

The cat family exhibition is quite comprehensive:

tiger, puma, jaguar, leopard etc. Pity there is only one of each, lonely right?

More pix with those bronze creatures...

Here papa is shaking Ewan's windbreaker to get the rhino's attention.

It actually worked. The rhino which was standing quite far away came so near us.

Our monkeys...

One final pix before saying bye bye to the zoo

We proceeded to the "nearby" Nipponbashi Den Den Town where electrical appliances are sold. This is the place for papa naturally. He can salivate at all the latest technology. Salivate only huh, cannot buy...

Our boys playing my Nintendo DS outside the store while papa shopped.

Because we don't want them to touch those expensive products ;-)

We didn't expect to find toy stores in Den Den Town!

There were so many of them too. We, I mean, I couldn't resist the temptation to buy some for the kids. We got a quite a good deal, buying some old series Gundam toys.

We walked (yes) all the way back to the hotel - effectively walking the distance of about 3 subway stations. So much walking in Osaka. It is no wonder we all decided to return to Singapore the next day instead of the day after next ;-)