Shizuoka Prefecture - Birds, Castles and Caves (oh my!)

On Saturday,  I took an MWR tour with four friends from the squadron. We headed south to Shizouka prefecture. When I have subsequently talked about this trip to students in the past few days, I've noticed that the tour sounds kind of lame, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I'm sure that's because of the company I was with. We made everything a great time despite the all day rain. I'll probably break this up in to a few posts because it was a 13 hour day and we saw lots of things!

First, we stopped at Kacho-en Bird Park. This is an aviary/zoo and it was a wonderful place because the animals are free to roam and fly (except for the owls that will eat the other birds/hurt people). I think this is my favorite picture of the whole trip:

Nicole was not a fan of the birds landing on her at first. Oh and Lauren got pooped on, that was funny.

We got to feed the penguin-san! They were so cute, I want to take one home with me!
Then we saw birds, birds and more birds. Some outdoor birds:

There was even a bird "show". The secretary bird was my favorite. It eats snakes and kills them by stomping on their heads! They did a demo with a fake snake for us.

Then we went inside and saw some of the water birds. Who knew flamingos were aggressive? One of them bit me while I was trying to take a picture with it!

This is much better: