A tiny ferris wheel, a godzilla made of tires, and owl poop

This post has been a long time coming.  The photos are all from a Sunday in December, but I wanted to wait until I got some photos from a friend to post along with mine.  It all started with a plan to go see some owls...

(Insert time-traveling harp music here.)

My friend Eli and I had heard about this owl cafe in our neighborhood.

"What's an owl cafe?" you ask. Well, an owl cafe is a variation on a cat cafe, which is popular in Japan.

"Ok, but what's a cat cafe?"

Pretty much it's a place where people go pay to play with cats and drink soft drinks. A lot of people can't have pets in their apartments here, but cats are just so cuuuuute, so some entrepreneurial people have decided on a way to make money while letting people get their cat fix. Or their owl fix, in this case.

Anyways, Eli and I had been pretty excited about this for a while. Because how often do you get to hang out with owls? So one sunny Sunday afternoon we walked on over. Upon discovering that we had just missed the lunch time opening and would have to wait until "cafe time", we decided to go ride the tiny little ferris wheel on top of the department store down the street.  Up until a year ago, I didn't even know there was roof access, but there's a fair share of amusement available (depending on your standards for "amusement").

Here it is:

It takes a "full three minutes" to go all the way around...

Not a bad view from the top

Proof that we enjoyed ourselves

After getting a level of enjoyment proportionate to the size of the ferris wheel, we made our way back to the owl cafe.  Only to discover that we had not come "on time", at a place where no appointments are necessary. (Japanese people...)

With more time to kill, we decided to turn ourselves into full-fledged local tourists and head over to a nearby children's playground, made entirely out of old tires.  Much more than a junk-yard, designers have been creative here:

First there was godzilla...

Then we saw some boys who *obviously* know how to enjoy themselves at a playground...

And eventually we made our way over to the robot.

I know it's meant for kids, but I liked it.

Finally, back to the owl cafe.  Where we learned we had arrived too late. Again...

This time they sent us downstairs to an oden restaurant where we ordered drinks and sat down for a 30-minute wait. But when 4pm finally rolled around, it was definitely worth the trouble. For 1,000 yen we got a tea or coffee and a full hour of owls galore.

Owls are nocturnal, so this guy humored us and let us wake him up from a nap

This one looks much more wide-awake in the photo than I remember him being...

There were four owls in the room and only two other customers.  We sat down for a brief (5 min.) explanation by the staff, and then we were essentially given the rest of the time to pet them, photograph them, and even let them sit on our heads.

Just chillin'...

In case you got tired of looking at real owls, there were owl decorations all over the room. (The one on the right is real.)

They're surprisingly light. They really liked my sweater, too. I held two of them and both just wanted to pick at it with their beaks, but I did my best to make friends:

This photo was taken moments before he jumped onto my head, pooped,
and then it all ran down the back of my hair and onto my sweater...

In spite of a setback or two (see above caption) it was a pleasant afternoon.