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Japan 2014, Part 2.

Sunday, March 2nd, 2014

Ah, the heated toilet seats. I cannot speak highly enough of them. We trekked through a great many cold environments, it being winter and all, and we’d see some outdoor lavatory situation, pop in there for a tinkle and boom! Toasty seat. Invariably I would say, “I live here now. It is warm and I am happy. Move on with your life. This is my home.” In addition, I am accustomed to my toilet flushing and that’s about it. The toilets in Japan do everything short of your taxes. Here was a sign next to one.

I could not bring myself to press any of the water-squirty features but I if anyone else has, please tell me if they’re magical or horrifying.

The other thing that I adored were the vending machines. They are everywhere. Seriously. Next to a giant Buddha, in the middle of the forest, in random residential cul-de-sacs. Seriously, everywhere. And they dispense both hot and cold beverages. I started liking certain flavors and looking for machines selling those flavors. I would buy the hot ones and keep them in my pocket warming my belly and then when it cooled a bit I would drink it. They were the greatest. If I lived there and wasn’t unable to drink carbonated beverages (they burn the inside of my mouth, I’ve never had Coke or Pepsi or beer or champagne) I would make a point to try each and every flavor of everything in all the different vending machines and make a spreadsheet of them. Because I am so very cool.

The way you know if the beverage is cold or hot is to look where the selection button is, right under the can. Is it blue? Cold. Is it red? Hot. The Moomins and I didn’t know that and one night she was hankerin’ for a beverage and I wasn’t allowing her to drink any more tea because it was after 7:00 p.m. and I didn’t want her to be up all night. We came across a machine that was selling this:

The Moomins and I didn’t see the red underneath (you can clearly see it there) so we thought the hot meant spicy. No, it was actually hot ginger ale. The Moomins, being the trooper that she is, drank it anyway. And here’s the kicker: she loved it. It was like sparkling ginger tea. She was suffering from a hacking cough the entire time we were there and she said the only thing that helped was this drink. I was on a constant pilgrimage to find some.

Look! Hot corn soup!

Okay, the Ghibli Museum. Miyazaki is an animator of a variety of films, the most famous of which is either My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away. This is Miyazaki’s museum. Snorth had told me about it and I felt like this needed to be checked out. It’s a small museum, so you need to buy tickets well in advance from a registered ticket seller. It’s all on their website. The museum only takes a certain number of people a day, so you need to get tickets no less than a month ahead. We took the JR to Mitaka Station where we got off and was greeted by exquisite ikebana flower arrangements right at the bottom of the escalator.

I was astonished how something like this was right out in the open and not in a glass case or behind bars. Are you familiar with the phrase, “This is why we can’t have nice things”? I think of that all the time in America. In Japan no one stole any of the flowers or wrote “L.M. <3 B.R.” on the paper tablecloth under the arrangement or poured their leftover soda in the vase. I noticed that the Japanese are really into being respectful and following rules. There’s a system and a structure and it is not to be meddled with. More than three times I found myself at a crosswalk and I could see no cars were coming from the left or the right, there were no cars on the road at all. But that crossing light was red and therefore no one crossed. No one moved until that light turned green. When I would go into a shop there would often be a little tray to put your money on when paying. In one store I put the money directly on the counter like an animal because I didn’t see the tray. The shopkeeper moved the money to the tray, then took it and put it in the cash register. Like, placed the money in the tray then immediately picked it up to put it away like if it didn’t stop off in the tray it was not legal tender. And people always reference the Harajuku district of Tokyo. “People dress so wacky there! It’s so edgy and cool!” Well, sort of. It’s only on Sunday between certain hours. It’s a contained individuality. Most everywhere else everyone dressed pretty much the same, often very modestly. I felt like I was surrounded by Asian Orthodox Jews, fashion-wise. I often caught people staring at me, not in a bad way, but in a curious way because I was different. Different is not really encouraged I think. That’s the vibe I got. I could totally be wrong, I was only there for two weeks. But that’s the impression I got. The point of this rambling paragraph is that Japan’s rule system may be constricting to one’s personal flair, but you can have stunning flower arrangements out in the open, so that’s a plus.

Back to Mitaka Station. It was a breath of fresh air. It was filled with gorgeous little food stalls that sold all kinds of beautifully presented snackery in pretty boxes. It was like Christmas. If we hadn’t had the tickets for the Ghibli Museum we might have stayed in the station all day, looking at flowers and eating unknown food items (we ended up getting a dumpling sampler from there on our way back from the museum, it was delicious). The museum is buried in the corner of a park and it’s about a mile from the station. A shuttle bus will take you directly there (I found a pic online of what the bus stop and shuttle looks like):

but since we had just sat for a 12-hour flight the day before and the weather was cool and overcast, we decided to walk. Which was great because we walked past a dog cafe! Oh my God. It’s a place you can bring your canine and have English tea. That’s it. We went in and tea had just finished for about four people, one who had two poodles and one who had a sheltie and the owner had a phalene in her arms. As soon as The Moomins came over, the little phalene struggled to get in The Moomins arms for cuddles. It was heart-meltingly cute.

We walked along the brook that runs through that part of town and saw snowmen. Japan doesn’t make the kind of snowmen we make. They make little snow spirits and they are waaaaaaay better than the lumpy atrocities one sees on lawns in the area I live in.

What is that, a deer? Love it.

Then we came to the park and in front of us was an odd-looking yellow stucco house with this sign in front of it.

And then there’s a ticket booth manned by a giant plush Totoro.

We went in with our printouts from the registered ticket vendor which at the front door were exchanged for two tickets containing three film frames of a Miyazaki movie. Ours were boring frames (one was a landscape at night, so blue and black and nothing else), but I found a pic on the internet of someone else’s better ones.

Then we walked inside and it is like a teeny tiny personal Disneyland. There’s a mural on the ceiling and gorgeous stained glass windows and fun little architectural details, all of which I would have taken photos of except I was informed that photography inside was prohibited. Okay, I thought, I’m sure they’ll have a pamphlet or a booklet of all the sweetness here that I will buy in the gift shop. The Moomins and I looked at all the exhibitions showing how the animation teams make the movies. There was a fantastic use of strobe lighting in the middle of the downstairs. It was a rotating disc with characters from the films as little sculptures and it spun at just the right speed so when the strobe hit it the sculptures looked like they were flying, skipping rope, etc. It punches you right in the heart. If someone told me they visited the museum and cried, I would in no way be surprised. I found a video of the strobe thing. If you’re planning to visit ever, don’t watch this because you should experience it fresh. If you’re never planning on going, go ahead and watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0qYzJUoT7g

Apparently the spinning thing is called a zoetrope. You learn new things every day.

I walked around with a big dumb smile on my face the whole time. There was a little movie theater called the Saturn Theater showing a ten minute Miyazaki movie that was made only for that space, so we stood in line and we saw it. Neither The Moomins nor I speak Japanese but somehow we totally understood it. It was delightful.

After seeing all the exhibitions we finally made it over to the gift shop where I promptly asked if there was something on the stained glass windows / the building itself. I was informed there was not. I was mad, but I continued to be a good rule-follower and not take pictures. Luckily other people broke the rules and I found their pics online.

See? Right. And then I couldn’t take it anymore. Rules were meant to be broken. I positioned The Moomins in front of me and managed to get a pic of a metal bat on the top of the elevator tower.

On the second floor there’s an enormous plush catbus that kids can play on with great cutouts of bugs in the wood that surrounds the play area. Took secret pictures of that too.

And then the piece de resistance for me, a small window with the Radish Spirit and No-Face from Spirited Away waving at me. Spirited Away was the reason I went to Japan in the first place. I saw it in 2001 and I was enchanted. The hell I’m not taking a shot of that.

Just as I snapped the shot one of the museum attendants came past me and said, “No picture.” I imagine if I was Japanese I would have been disgusted with myself and possibly committed seppuku for bringing such dishonor on my family, but I truly didn’t care. IF YOU DIDN’T WANT ME TAKING PHOTOS YOU WOULD HAVE MADE A BOOKLET OF THE AWESOME STAINED GLASS WINDOWS MA’AM. I FEEL NO SHAME. BRING IT.

Before I ruined the U.S.’s reputation even further we went outside to the cafe. It was a lovely cafe where we shared a cup of roasted barley tea and I took a photo of the handles of the washbasin. I think it’s the cat from Kiki’s Delivery Service.

There were exhibits outside as well. On the roof there’s a big metal robot from one of Miyazaki’s other films (I have not seen his entire filmography so I don’t get all the references).

And there’s a cube from another Miyazaki film. And some spinny noisemakers that look like fish. But in my opinion my favorite things were the snow sculptures. Near the front door was a stone forest dweller from Spirited Away.

And on the roof someone had made both the main big Totoro and his two backup smaller Totoros. I (brilliantly, if I must say) decided they should be called snow-toros. Look. Look at the snow-toros.

That was a phenomenal start to my Japanese journey. The next entry will delve into some Tokyo sightseeing.

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Japan 2014, Part 1.

Friday, February 28th, 2014

Okay! I finally sorted through the megaton of photos and whittled them down and now we can commence with the cutery and weirditude. Japan was great. I wanted to go someplace really foreign to me, and it certainly was that. You know how in, like, Europe or South America or Africa they use the Roman alphabet so even if you don’t know what you’re looking for exactly you can sound it out or at least recognize the order the letters are in and use that? You can even do that with Cyrillic. Not in Japan. Three alphabets. Three. One of them is crazy convoluted and every character looks like a maze. You cannot sound that stuff out. If the sign isn’t in English, you are S.O.L. Now a great many signs are in English, but then a great many are not and The Moomins and I were completely in the dark. Let me tell you about the street system. Fun fact: Many of the streets have no names. Yup, you heard me right. No names. And the houses are numbered by the order they were built, so 22 could be next to 458 which is next to 3. The post officer’s jobs are nightmares. Don’t believe me? Look at this small chunk of a map of Kyoto.

It can get rough if you stop paying attention. A lot of directions involve instructions like, “When you get to a corner with two lanterns and a Family Mart, make a left.” And don’t be concerned about the swastikas, they represent Buddhist temples. I saw them everywhere. I thought I would have a visceral reaction to them, but they didn’t bother me a bit. They always showed up in the most soothing of places so maybe, if I lived there, I could retrain my brain that they’re a good thing. No more wincing at swastikas would be nice.

I’m going to do this chronologically because I think it will give you a better overview of the trip. First there was the 12-hour plane flight which I couldn’t sleep on because I didn’t take any sleepytime drugs and the seats are not comfy. It was cool, I watched movies the whole time. Delta has an amazing selection of movies and they leave all the cursewords in! I sent them a letter saying thank you for not tampering with my entertainment. Anyway, we landed and I had been up for twenty hours and was exhausted and looking forward to going to the hotel and passing out on the bed. However, it was not to be. It had snowed the day before in Tokyo, the most snow they had seen in forty-odd years and they didn’t have the manpower or supplies in place to deal with it. Then the highway had black ice so they closed it. This is the only highway that goes from Narita to Tokyo, which means no shuttles, buses, limos or cabs. We arrived and stood in a line outside freezing because there was a rumor some cabs were making it through. After two hours though it was clear that was not going to happen, so The Moomins and I went into the terminal. It was not a good scene. The airport was handing out sleeping bags, blankets and bubble wrap to people and they were setting up camp anywhere they could find a place – under the stairs, in the hallway to the bathroom, directly in front of the taxi and shuttle counter (no one was using it anyway). It was bleak.

I was ready to set up camp somewhere and taste the glorious dream-state that was being painfully withheld from me, but The Moomins would have none of it. She said she was old and we had booked a hotel room with beds and paid for it already. By Jove, we were going to sleep in those beds even if we had to bribe someone to lift us via helicopter to Tokyo. It turns out that the JR train (similar to Amtrak or Metro-North) was still running, so we got on line for that. The longest line in the history of lines. It snaked back and forth through the entire terminal, folding over itself four or five times.

This was interesting: I read somewhere that one of the unofficial mottoes of Japan is “suffer silently.” Not once did I see anyone in any of the lines or lying on the floor complain or get testy in any way. In America there would have been some clearly visible grumpiness. The Israelis would have commandeered a city bus, ripped up a garbage can to create makeshift chains for the tires and chugged off for Tokyo on the closed highway (they’re go-getters, those Israelis). At one point I saw a Chinese couple ( I could tell they were Chinese because the woman was talking on the phone) and she was hella-pissed. The husband was pushing the cart of luggage and wearing their infant in a Baby Bjorn on his chest, and he accidentally hit his wife in the legs with the front of the cart. She whirled around and kicked the cart. He curtly said something and she went to slap him but he flinched and she hit the baby who started crying. If I wasn’t so intent on not losing my place in line, I would have said, “Be back in a minute,” and followed them down the hall because I could hear them yelling at each other, Doppler-style, down the length of the terminal. No one who was Japanese did that. The only complaining I heard was from an American pilot and and an Indian couple behind me. Finally, after standing in this line for about two hours we got tickets for the JR train. We got packed in like sausages and then it left the station. But because the tracks were icy it went fifteen miles an hour. It was torturous. I almost started crying from sheer exhaustion. After a thousand years we arrived at the main Tokyo Station where we stood in yet another line outside in the cold and got a cab to our hotel. The trip from the airport to the hotel should have taken about two hours. It took eleven and a half. We got to the hotel at 3:30 in the morning. When I got back to New York and people said, “You missed some snow, it was terrible,” I was like, “I felt the effects of snow on my trip. The joy and wonder of snow was not lost on me.”

http://rt.com/news/record-snowfall-hits-japan-202/

The next day was going to be vastly better because I was going to the Ghibli Museum. I went to sleep thinking about the fact that HOLY CRAP I’M IN JAPAN. And the toilet seats are heated and how glorious that is. More on that tomorrow.

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I have returned.

Tuesday, February 25th, 2014

I’m back from my Japanese journey and I’ve started sorting through the 1,000+ photos I took. While I’m getting going on the blogging, please enjoy these two quintessential photos of Japan. One is a Hello Kitty branded giant dried squid, and the other is a little girl wearing a cat-ear headband eating green tea ice cream with someone in the background sporting a hoodie with a kawaii angry panda on it. BOOM. JAPAN. NUTSHELL.

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Off to frolic with Totoro.

Friday, February 7th, 2014

Alright everyone, I shall be gone for two weeks in Japan. I will return on the 23rd, when I will begin the sorting and uploading of what will no doubt be a heaping great pile of photos. Enjoy this charming weather until my return and I’ll see you all when I get back.

Clarification in case you don’t know who Totoro is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro

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Japan is going to take all my money, and I’m okay with it.

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

Let’s add another fantastic Japanese craft to my long list of stuff I’m gonna buy whilst visiting the Japanese isles, shall we? Temari. Balls covered with embroidery thread. No big whoop, right? Wrong. Look at this collection of temari.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nanaakua/tags/temari/

I’m going to need about ten or fifteen of those, thanks. Perhaps if I just hand Japan my debit card and pin code, this will all go much faster.

Addendum 1/9/14: Two things. One, my friend Moss and I were texting the other night. She just came back from Japan and I asked her for any tips and she said there was an utterly amazing ramen place in Kyoto. I like the description the gave for what their ramen is like.

Two, I bought my tickets for my flight here at work on Delta, and ever since then I’ve been getting Delta ads in Japanese. Now, whenever I bought tickets to Costa Rica or Belgium I never got ads in Spanish or Flemish or French, so why am I getting Japanese ads?

It makes me think that Japan does not have a booming tourist industry. Or most people who go there have a grasp on the language already. I want to tell Delta not to waste their time because I cannot understand what the ads are saying, but that would require effort and therefore it will never happen.

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JAPAN. OMG.

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Guys, I just booked a trip to Japan in February. JAPAAAAAAAN. I’ve wanted to go to Japan for, like, twenty years. I’m going with The Moomins. I always recommend traveling with retirees. They have money and time, they’re excellent travel companions. I’m going to three major areas – Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. I’m also going to Nara to hang with the sacred deer. Here are some pics I found on the internet to give you an idea.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Nara_deer_beg_for_handouts_outside_a_shop_on_Sanjo_Street.JPG

http://boingboing.net/filesroot/nara-deer-park01.jpg

http://www.julialohmann.co.uk/news/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/nara-deer.jpg

And then I’m also going to hang out and possibly bathe with the snow monkeys! More pics for clarity.

http://wallpapers.pupazzo.org/animals/Chilly_%20Japanese%20Snow%20Monkeys.jpg

http://www.japanskiexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/why-snow-monkeys.jpg

http://static.environmentalgraffiti.com/sites/default/files/images/marc-veerat.jpg

Here’s a list of all the places we will be going.

Todaiji Temple /// Kiyomizu Temple /// Nishijin Textile Center /// Gion (the old Geisha Quarter) and Pontocho /// Kenrokuen Garden /// Seisonkaku Villa /// Matsumoto Castle /// The Plum Blossoms Festival in Atami (they bloom in the winter) /// Kamakura Daibutsu (The Great Budhha) /// Hachimangu Shrine /// Tokyo Tower /// Imperial Palace /// Sensoji Temple

How frikkin’ amazing does this sound?!? I also get to see a 1,000 year old gingko tree, bathe in a traditional Japanese spa and stay in a traditional Japanese inn. I already anticipate spending all my money. I love Japanese artwork something fierce so I am going to have a problem. I intend to pack a bag in my bag for all the purchases I will be taking home. There will be gorgeousness like this:

Ooohhhhhhh dear. And did I mention kawaii? Kawaii means cute in Japanese, and if you know anything about Japan, you know they do cute better than anyone.

One specific artistic item I really want to purchase is kanzashi. Kanzashi is name for the hair ornaments primarily worn by geishas. They used to be made out metal or ivory or lacquer, but I want to get a set made with fabric, like these:

So I was doing a bunch of research on where to shop for them (I found three stores in Kyoto, so wish me luck) but in the process of hunting on the internet, I came across someone who makes the most exquisite kanzashi. Her name is Sakae and she dips wire into resin. The wire has been made into a loop so when it dips in the resin it forms a skin, not unlike a bubble wand in bubble solution. Then the resin dries that way. Her work, there are no words. She is amazing.

Ugggggghhhhh. My heart hurts looking at her work. Unfortunately, Sakae only sells her wares on a Japanese auction site, not in any stores. So I friended her on Facebook in the hopes that I will be notified if her work is up for sale (not that I’d understand a damn thing on the site, but a girl can dream).

Long story short: Going to Japan in February. Can’t wait. Gonna be awesome.

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 8 and done.

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

I heard a request for MOAR SLORFS!! Not a problem.

I learned a scary lesson while sitting with Judy, the owner of the Sloth Sanctuary. I had fawned over Her Highness and then I was sitting not paying any attention to Princess Buttercup when she ever-so-slowly draped her arm over her head and let out this loud shrill scream. It sounded kind of like someone letting the air out of a balloon into a loudspeaker. It was off-putting to say the least. I turned to Judy and said something along the lines of, “What is God’s good name was that?” and Judy said, “That’s just Princess Buttercup telling you you should pay more attention to her.” In the wild, sloths are solitary creatures, so when the lady sloth is ready to mate she lets out that eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee and the males know there’s a willing and receptive female over yonder. Here’s a video I found of a female making the screamings. Piercing, is it not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEGa3pT-I7E

I forgot to include a cool fact about sloths yesterday: Those claws, they are bone. Exposed bone covered in keratin. And if they snap off, the sloths can regenerate them. Did I mention they are fascinatingly weird creatures? I don’t feel like I dwelt on that for long enough.

Here are the bathroom signs.

Within the groupings of Three-Fingered and Two-Fingered, there are sub-groups dependent on the sloth’s location. For example, this is Delilah. They call her that because her hair is longer and darker than the other Two-Fingered Sloths, and THAT is because she is a mountain sloth and it is colder in the mountains.

There are some non-releasable sloths at the facility and I got to pet one named Millie. This is a picture of The Moomins rubbing Millie’s tummy. I could have loved on Millie all damn day. This was surprising: I expected sloths to have bristle-y fur, all rough and steel-wool-like. In reality they were quite smooth, like a Labrador retriever. I was not expecting that.

This is a Three-Fingered Sloth, I think his name is George. He is a permanent resident because he’s missing a front arm. I think he lost it from being electrocuted. He seemed okay with it.

Sloths tend to do well in captivity because they don’t move around much. If food is readily available, they will hang out in one crotch of a tree for days and days and days. I’m telling you, Princess Buttercup never leaves her wicker hanging chair. Sometimes Judy wraps her around her waist and takes her for a walk in the forest, but Princess Buttercup doesn’t like it. She likes her chair.

This is Lightning. She’s a prima donna. She insists on her own big cage with her own bed and her own branches to climb on that she doesn’t have to share.

This is a Three-Fingered Sloth male. The only external difference between the TFS males and females is that big orange-and-cream-with-black-stripes marking on his back. If the sloth is unwell, or old, or malnourished, his colored markings fade and females know he’s not quality goods to mate with. In fact, if two male sloths show up to mate with the same female, they’ll check out each other’s back markings and the lesser one will often just leave rather than have the slowest battle-of-the-fittest in history.

Then there’s the Slothpital. That’s where broken sloths go to heal. I saw this one sleeping in what I would consider an uncomfortable position. He or she seemed fine with it though. Sloths: say what you want about them, they are mellow. There’s some eating, then some napping, once a week there’s pooping, every so often some mating, aaaaaaand that’s it.

I met Lenny in the Slothpital. He was born with a deformed jaw and he couldn’t latch on to his mother’s nipple, so he was rescued and fed with an eye dropper. He’s grown up into quite a lovely young fellow. You can see in this picture how his mouth won’t close.

I was wondering if sloths can hear well, and apparently they can. Jeff moved Lenny’s fur so I could see his sweet little seashell-like ear. OMG HOW CUTE IS THAT EAR!

Then we got to meet a bunch of wee orphan babies. They spend most of their day in the incubators clinging to stuffed animals, but we happened to come by while they were having their daily exercise. They do not like their daily exercise. They make sad complainy noises. It’s so adorable it hurts a little.

I got video of the complaining!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju5U9qhVFVc

This little one, the smallest of the bunch, he just wanted to gnaw on the wooden jungle gym.

I got video of that too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua2TTi2bnfk

After this magical time with the wee babies, we picked some hibiscus flowers off of a hedge and brought them to two of the permanent residents. Sloths think hibiscus flowers are like candy. We saw some serious hibiscus drama unfold directly in front of us.

Watch the footage!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noskwJe72ws

That’s all the organized pictures I have. Now the straggler photos.

Two butterflies doin’ the nasty:

Some really terrific fern fists:

Queen’s Trumpet or Moonflowers. They have psychotropic qualities. If you make a tea with them, you see things that are not there. So don’t make a tea with them.

A lot of the now-natural reserves were farmland at the turn of the century. Since there wasn’t really fences anywhere, the farmers put these specific plants on the edge of their property. You can see those magenta leaves for quite a distance. So while we were walking through the Cahuita Reserve, we came across the marker plant of the former farm it used to be.

A gecko clinging to the ceiling:

And a vulture I saw hanging out on the side of the road eating roadkill. The black vultures I saw there were the most attractive carrion-eaters I’ve ever seen. They’re usually pretty grotesque-looking, but these guys are pretty okay.

That’s my trip to Costa Rica! If you have any questions, give me a holler and I’ll try to answer it with my limited ability. Oh, and my trip was organized by Latitudes Adventure. They did a great job. I recommend that you check ’em out.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Costa Rica 2013, Part 7.

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

I bet you thought I forgot, right? I drifted off into a nap and when I awoke I failed to remember to blog about the sloths, eh? Well, you are incorrect. I was swamped with work. It ate my soul. Many a day went by where I had to choose between eight more minutes of precious sleep or a shower. It was not fun. But now the deadlines are slowing up, so I can return to bringing you the quality vacation reporting you have come to expect from this fine establishment. So here’s what you’ve been waiting for. Visit www.AllWorld.com to read travel-related articles and plan your next domestic or international travel.

The Sloth Sanctuary! (Or as I like to call it, The Slorphanage.) The Moomins and I pulled up at the gate and we were greeted by a giant sculpture of what sloths looked like in the time of the dinosaurs. Short answer: they were big.

We then met the lady in charge, an American woman named Judy who married a Costa Rican man and has lived and run this hotel / sanctuary for several decades. As we were talking to her in front of the reception area I saw a hanging wicker chair. Now, most people wouldn’t give two thoughts to a hanging wicker chair, but I happen to know that Princess Buttercup, the mascot of the sanctuary and the very first sloth they rescued twenty years ago, lives in a wicker chair. So I freaked out a bit. I asked Judy’s daughter Ursula, “Ummmm, is that Princess Buttercup over there?” and Ursula said cheerfully, “Why yes, that’s Her Royal Highness. Why don’t you go say hi?” I don’t think Ursula had finished the sentence before I sprinted across the room. Princess Buttercup was glorious.

I startled her a little bit, so she awoke and paid about thirty seconds of attention to me.

I got some footage just as her disinterest in me manifested itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byIO5g2nUmI

Princess Buttercup is a three-fingered sloth. There’s a movement to call them “three-fingered” and “two-fingered” instead of “three-toed” and “two-toed” because all sloths have three big claws on their back feet. It’s the front claws that matter. I learned so much about sloths. They are fascinating and extremely bizarre. Here’s some of the things I learned.

Three-Fingered Sloths and Two-Fingered Sloths have enough incompatible components that they are unable to cross-breed. It’s like the difference between ostriches and emus. They’re both large, creepy, dinosaur-like flightless birds, but they can’t make babies. Same with sloths.
The Two-Fingered Sloth eats fruit and leaves and bugs. The Three-Fingered Sloth eats fruits and leaves, no bugs. Twice a day someone comes over to Princess Buttercup’s hanging chair and clips fresh leaves to the side of her chair. She doesn’t have a water bowl or anything. She gets almost all her moisture from the leaves and the occasional green bean or piece of fruit.
Sloths poop once a week. They come down the tree and goes to the bathroom at the base of the tree. Scientists don’t really know why. There are a few theories. One, if the sloth poops from the canopy the waste will hit a million leaves on the way down, creating a ruckus and giving away the sloth’s position to possible predators. The other reasoning is super-weird: there is a moth that lives in the sloth’s fur, a “sloth moth” if you will, and when the sloth goes down to the base on the tree, the moth has enough time to lay its eggs in the poop and then hop back onto the sloth on its way back up.
The sloth’s diet is so low in nutrition, they are practically cold-blooded. Seriously. It’s really hard for them to maintain their body temperature. In fact, it was 80 degrees when we visited and the baby orphan sloths were in incubators with blankies because they have to be 84 degrees. Awwww.
Both sloths don’t really have collar bones and have tons of extra vertebrae in their necks, so they can rotate their heads all over the place and spin their arms and legs around to grab onto whatever branch might be near them. Since they have crazy fur that grows in all which ways it can sometimes be hard to figure out which way is up. They’re like an slow, non-threatening version of the chick in The Exorcist when she comes down the stairs backwards.
Of the 148 sloths at the Sloth Sanctuary, only about 18 are Three-Fingered Sloths. That’s because Two-Fingered Sloths will hang out in trees near people and therefore if they are damaged, they are more often found by good Samaritans and brought to the slorphanage.

First of all, when we arrived we checked into our room (“Harpo”):

And in our hallway was something on the wall, up there, on the right. Could it be?

Yay! A little smiling bat companion. I asked Ursula about him and she said, “Yeah, that’s where he’s decided to live.”

Then Ursula said, “Have you seen the other bats?” and I was like, “There are other bats?? More bats?? Take me to the bats!” They were right outside. The wall-clingers and the ceiling-clingers.

The wall-clingers are Greater White-Lined Bats and the ceiling-clingers are the Proboscis Bat. They were delightful. I don’t know how you can’t like them: they’re cute and they eat bugs. It’s a win-win.

The next morning before our tour of the slothery we went on a hour-long boat ride on the lazy river that is part of the property. First, I took a walk through the garden. It was stunning. The colors and smells were intoxicating. And I saw a neato succulent. Its babies grow on the rim of the leaf and when passersby knock them off, they grow into new plants. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plant that reproduces like that.

And look at this clingy flat-leaf thing.

I saw what I thought was a large porcelain crab with a blue glaze while I was taking my morning garden tour. It’s really common there to have lawn ornaments. The ones I saw were made mostly of cement. I really liked this cement anteater.

Anyway, I assumed the large blue crab was decorative. Then he scuttled halfway into his home and I jumped because hey! not a lawn ornament, very much alive.

The Moomins and I made our way to the dock. I loved that the dock had a mirror ball, you know, for any impromptu parties that might break out on this tiny dock in the middle of nowhere.

We got into the canoe and meandered our way around the area. We saw more crabs, this time coral-colored, and I loved how they looked on those root structures. To me, the roots looked like sopping wet velvet all folded up.

We saw a baby crocodile sitting in his burrow that he had dug out. He was about a foot and a half long. Little guy.

This cutie-cute bird is called a Flycatcher. I like the little dot on the top of his head.

There were some Howler Monkeys in the trees looking for tasty treats. Periodically they would make their loud powerful gutteral calls and it was strangely soothing. Here’s someone else’s video of what they sound like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHaYQWwCXZw

And here’s a photo I took of them.

I saw both types of Jesus Lizard, the brown kind and the totally-fake-couldn’t-possibly-be-real green kind.

But the bestest thing was when we went under a log that had fallen over. First of all, the log had trees growing on it, which was cool in itself. But underneath, maybe two feet from my head was… snuggling bats!!

This is a different type of bat from the bats I hung out with above, but I couldn’t figure out what kind these are, so we’re going to call them Snuggling Smiling Fuzzy Brown Bats.

Tomorrow I will show all my pics from the Slorphanage and then we are done.

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 6.

Sunday, April 21st, 2013

Guess what? I went to another rainforest! I know, I haven’t mentioned a rainforest in the last five minutes. But hey, I went to Costa Rica to hang out with plants and animals, and that’s what I did all day every day. This particular rainforest had a research center in it and it was on the side of a mountain, so I got to go to the research center and take an open-air aerial tram through the canopy. The research center was impressive. There were shadow boxes on the wall of, and I am not making this number up, the 1,000 different species of butterfly the scientists had discovered in that particular rainforest so far. That’s a lot of butterflies. I took pictures of some of them.

And here are some giant furry moths pretending to be snakes or owls so predators won’t want to eat them.

They also had what I assume is an Orchid Bee. I’ve always wanted to see an Orchid Bee because I believe (bee-lieve! Ha ha ha!) they’re the only bees that are metallic green. On Wikipedia it says there’s another reason that the Orchid Bee is special, but I cannot figure out what it says because I do not speak science.

Euglossine bees, also called orchid bees, are the only group of corbiculate bees whose non-parasitic members do not all possess eusocial behavior.

Speaking of bugs, I saw the biggest grasshopper ever. He was like an antagonist from a 1950s drive-in movie come to life. Humongous. That’s a banana leaf it’s sitting on if you’re looking for scale.

And I saw a millipede! Well, the back third of a millipede. The rest of him was under a log. He must have been over six inches long. I am very familiar with the African Millipede who is a shiny black tube-shaped fella with evenly distributed legs. This millipede was totally different. First of all, he was brown and matte. He looked like he was made out of one of those toys little kids play with where you can make objects longer by snapping more plastic segments onto it. But the thing he has in common with the African Millipede is that when he’s scared he can shoot burny chemicals out of his butt that taste atrocious (so I’m told, I didn’t test this out myself).

We saw a plant that supposed to be unchanged since prehistoric times. It looked so fake. It felt fake too, like vinyl. I thought it was plastic until the park ranger broke off a small corner of one leaf and I could see and smell its life-fluids.

This is a Walking Tree. It’s called that because if it decides there’s more water and nutrition on the left it will kill off its roots on the right and grow new roots on the left, shifting itself about a meter. It takes about a year to do that, but considering that most trees move nowhere in a year, that’s really impressive.

• | • | • INTERMISSION • | • | •

Since they use a lot of well-water in Costa Rica which has not been filtered in any way, it is unwise to drink from the tap. Therefore, I purchased a big bottle of local spring water every day. I took the time to read the label on this one. I really, really hope “S.T.D.” means something different in Spanish.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER • | • | •

Oh, I almost forgot to include the snakes. At the research center there were some snakes in captivity and I fell in love and ached to reach through the glass for snuggle-time. My two favorites were the green vine snake:

And a brown vine snake.

Then, to get to the other research station at the bottom of the mountain we took this open-air aerial tram. It was cool. I looked straight down at one point and was astonished by the variety of shapes in the foliage.

And we went past several towering trees that are believed to be 300 years old. It’s really hard to date them because, and I found this really interesting, since there are no seasons in the rainforest the trees don’t have rings. I never realized the rings are caused by seasonal change.

Finally, here’s a tree with roots that look like walls:

And a waterfall.

Brace yourself because tomorrow… SLOTHS!

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Costa Rica 2013, Part 5.

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

Before trail story-time, let’s look at some carts! The oxcarts in Costa Rica are hand-painted and it is a wonderful art form. I took pictures of a two carts and one yoke. So pretty.

Rainforest Walk! The Moomins and I were told that we were going on a “nature hike”. For three hours. I was petrified. I am not athletic, and what if I go on this hike with other people and we climb a mountain for three hours and they’re good hikers and I slow them down and they all hate me and then I throw up and pass out? I was skerred. However, I knew once I saw our guide we were a-okay for two reasons. One, he was morbidly obese, and two, he was wearing flip-flops. I immediately was like, yeah, I’m going to be fine.

It was fantastic. The Cahuita National Park goes right up to the beach.

The trail was about twenty feet inside the rainforest, so as you were walking through this crazy lush foliage you could hear the waves crashing on your left. It was paradise. Speaking of the beach, this type of ocean was something I had never experienced before. I’ve been in oceans many times before but they always had some way to slow down the current, whether man-made or natural. This chunk of Caribbean had nothing. There were signs everywhere that you go swimming at your own risk and that there was a rip current. The Moomins decided that we would forgo any warnings and live dangerously. Here’s some video I took before I even got into the water. I’m standing right at the edge. Notice how it’s all grabby and yanky. Very aggressive water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cBwgXMTJSc

So The Moomins and I went in up to our mid-thigh and it was intense. This actually happened, I have a witness: I was standing there when a wave crashed into me so hard that it made a “crack” noise against my abdomen. I belly-flopped standing perfectly still and upright. But the water was warm and clear, so we spend about forty-five minutes getting crotch-punched by Neptune. It was enjoyable in a weird way – you just had to be super-aware because the sand kept getting pulled out from under your feet and you would lose your footing if you didn’t stay on your game. I did discover something unfortunate when I got back to the bungalow. When I showered, the amount of sand that had been violently thrust into my crevices was astonishing. I felt like when a magician pulls that colored roll of tissue paper out of your mouth. You know Montezuma’s Revenge? I decided this should be called Poseidon’s Dilemma: the discovery of even more sand every time you shower for a week afterwards. “I thought I got it all” is the catchphrase.

I digress. Back to the nature walk. First, I thought I was seeing things because it looked like the ground was moving. It turns out it was covered with little holes that were inhabited by little crabs. When we would walk by, the wee crabbits would scuttle sideways into their holes to hide. I loved them.

There were also small lizards that were shiny and bright.

We walked past an iguana sunning himself.

And a basilisk lizard, also know as the Jesus Lizard for his ability to run on the surface of the water.

On the left we saw a little something move in a tree. A troupe of Capuchin Monkeys were all around in the bank of trees between us and the ocean.

We passed a male and female trogon. Trogons are birds that, in my opinion, look like they got knocked out in a bar fight and they’re trying to get their bearings. I’ve talked about them before. I always want to walk up to them and say, “How many fingers am I holding up? What day is it? Who’s the president?” Mr. Trogon is the teal-colored one, Mrs. Trogon is dark gray.

It was getting close to midday which is when animals tend to take a siesta. We walked right through a troupe of Howler Monkeys resting. We made some noise as we passed through and the leader opened his eyes a bit, decided we weren’t any kind of threat, and went right back to sleep. I like how the guy in the second picture is holding onto the branch so he doesn’t fall out the tree while napping.

And then! OMG! We came across a teeny-tiny eyelash pit viper. Even if you don’t like snakes, this one was cute. He was sitting on a leaf and he had his tail wrapped around the stem. I tried desperately to get a good picture, but my camera got uppity and decided to focus on things in the background. “Never mind this awesome snake right in front of us, let’s really draw attention to that rotting tree stump way the hell over there, that’s where the real action is!”

Every fiber of me was like I WANT TO PET IT but my brain wisely was like LET’S NOT LOSE OUR HAND TO NECROSIS TODAY so I didn’t pet the snake. There was a creek we had to cross at one point. We had to take off our shoes and walk along the beach to get through it. The creek-water was brown because there was a mangrove cluster along the route the creek takes, and mangroves apparently give off a lot of tannin so it had stained the water. I liked how it looked as it flowed into the ocean.

We finally reached the end where the coral reef began, ate some fruit (so delicious) and I watched the hermit crabs scamper around.

And then, drawn by the siren song of pineapple, the Capuchins showed up and concocted elaborate plans on how to distract us and steal our fruity treats. You know, how they do.