The Capybara Zoo and The Big Green Mountain – Yuru Camp Backpacking Part 9

Izu Shaboten Zoo and Mt Omuro are both places that the characters from Yuru Camp visit right at the end of Season 2. I really like capybaras, so I was excited to see and pet them at the zoo 🙂

From Shimoda, Kath and I took the train back up the Izukyuko line towards Tokyo, but we hopped off at Izu-Kogen station. Our bus wasn’t for a little bit and we were hungry for lunch. We checked out the various places to eat in the station, which had a mini mall attached to it. There was an udon-tempura place, and we both asked for the most popular thing on the menu. It was yummy.

Afterwards we still had some time to wait for our bus, so we had some time to kill. We found an interesting waiting room filled with interesting handmade furniture with funny features and functions, like tablet holders or adjustable armrests.

Izu Shaboten Zoo

Eventually we got on our bus and it took us to the zoo. I walked a little bit back down from the station to take the shot of the funny figure at the entrance.

We didn’t have a vehicle so we walked up to the foot entrance. It was a little steep but there were some cool plants and flowers on the way up.

After buying our tickets we went to the nearest enclosure, which happened to be the petting area, which had lots of capybaras! I think I was so focused on them that I forgot to line up the shot properly. But they were so cute.

There was a llama enclosure where you could feed them by attaching some grass to a piece of string (they are actually rather vicious creatures)

This goat was looking at me funny.

We went and looked at some more animals.

Eventually we made it to the bird enclosure, where Rin goes to try and find a famous bird!

We were super sad to find out that it had passed away a few years ago 😦

There was an entire room dedicated to it, with a shrine and everything.

The bird enclosure was super duper impressive. There were tons of exotic birds waddling or flying freely about and you could walk amongst them.

We named this lil guy Kevin.

A shot near the main area looking over towards Mt Omuro.

And just round the corner we took this fantastic picture.

The next thing on the checklist was…. the capybara hot spring! Yay!

LOOK AT THEM

Next to the capybaras was a cool penguin enclosure where you could feed them by sliding live fish down a mini chute thing.

We saw lots of exotic plants in the largest set of greenhouses I’d ever seen.

In the gift shop there were some capybara plushies!

And just outside the gift shop was that large wooden looking bird thingy.

We noticed it wasn’t too long until the last chairlift up Mt Omuro was due, so we headed out of the zoo to catch it.

Mt Omuro

At the area where you board the chair, there was this cool sign!

We hopped on, and it felt weird to board a chairlift without any skis on.

Looking back we can see the zoo!

And in the distance, I spotted the camera.

We made sure to pose appropriately.

We reached the top, and there was a souvenir shop with a fair amount of Yuru Camp merch.

There was a big crater in the middle of the summit. I guess this used to be a volcano. It looks like there was an archery range right in the middle.

While walking around the crater we came across some mysterious looking monk stone figures.

The view was impressive though.

Looking back towards the top of the chair.

We took a picture each in front of the big Mt Omuro sign, but it was too cloudy to see Mt Fuji :C

Back to Tokyo

And that totall After Izu, we headed back into Tokyo for a few days to do some shopping and fun stuff. Here’s some rapid fire pics. Cue the music.

Genshin posters up in Akiba

I went to some book stores and saw Eupho and Yuru Camp stuff!

Ramen!

We went to Team Labs

We went to many arcades and played mario kart and lots and lots of taiko.

Just a cool shot of a double decker railway bridge.

I bought pokemon stickers for me and my siblings and friends.

Some ready meals for absurdly cheap. 400 yen is about £2 / $2.50!

We went to Tokyo Dome City, a cool theme park kinda built into the cityscape. Little side note, the characters from another one of my favourite animes, Tsuki Ga Kirei, all go here on a trip.

We underestimated how wet the log ride was, and dried off with some karaoke in the ferris wheel.

After all that, we hopped on our flight to take us all the way home.

End (?)

And that wraps up the entire Japan trip from last year. But don’t be sad, I’m gonna be going back and doing more in a couple days! I’ll be there for a month. Here’s my current itinerary:

Tokyo for a week
- Chill, shopping, etc
- Visit Kawagoe again!
- Meet with a friend
Season 1 Yuru Camping with friend!
- Kofu/Pine Wood
- Lake Motosu
- Hamamatsu
Techno festival in Nara B)
Season 3 Yuru Camping
- Still need to finish the season
- 2 weeks to explore!