Southeast Botanical Gardens

About a week ago when I was reading numerous websites to see what things there were to see and do, I stumbled across a blog entry about the Southeast Botanical Gardens in Okinawa City. It wasn't the gardens themselves I really cared about seeing, but the exotic petting zoo, which houses one of my all time favourite animals, the Capybara! I first fell in love with the capybara, when I was living in Japan about 8 years ago, and one of the popular character toys at the time was Kapibara-san. I went a bit nuts and still have a decent collection of Kapibara-san toys.

Aaaanyway, I nearly lost my shit, when I found out there was a place I could pet and feed Capybaras so close to my house!! So after a week of excitement, we headed out on Saturday morning to the botanical gardens to meet these cuties! It didn't disappoint. Usually I find petting zoos really depressing, but this one was actually pretty nice, and realy well kept. They only limit a certain number of people in at a time, and only during certain times, so the Capybaras (housed with some cute little monkeys) don't seem to be constantly pestered by kids.

We were the only ones there, so we had all the Capybaras and monkeys to ourselves. Griff had a great time feeding the animals and I loved patting my new capybara friends!

Hanging out with our new animal friends

The monkey's had super soft hands, and were very cheeky.

The goats were a bit full on and tried to escape when we wanted to go in and feed them

I loved this guinea pig

My dream come true!

Apart from the petting zoo, there was also a bunch of jumping castles and slides, that were free to use (included in the 1500 yen entry to the gardens). Griff had an awesome time and didn't want to leave. From what I could tell, the jumping castles are there every weekend (but maybe not weekdays).

That's me at the top of the slide

Griff did not want to leave the jumping castles

After the gardens, we searched out Indira Indian restaurant on the way home, and it was absolutely delicious! The naan was super fresh and huge and the curries were so tasty. We will be back!