Izu Saboten(=cactuses) Park

Last Sunday, I went to Izu Saboten Park with my family to celebrate KANREKI(60th birthday) of my mother.

Although I have been to the Saboten Park ever, I've forgotten the experience because it was when I was a child. So it is been a long time to go there.

The Saboten Park has a broad land, many birds and animals and Saboten. It looks like a zoo rather than a botanical garden. Animals includes squirrel monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, kangaroos, and big rats. Birds are peacocks, pelicans, flamingos, and parakeets. Although all of them are very rare, we can also see shows of chimpanzees and parakeets. I watched the parakeet show, it was very funny.

Of course the park has Saboten. Some cactuses had their flowers, which it was the first time for me to watch. The colors of the cactus flowers varied; red, yellow and purple. And I knew that no cactuses were in Africa. Cactuses originally live in the North and South America. What looks like Cactus might be a kind of aloes(I didn't remember exactly).

Also there are Saboten-Gari corner, where we can see many small cactus, choose and take up some of them, and pay for them finally. It is for souvenirs. I and my wife selected a cactus covered with a lot of white extremely short spines, and we gave to my mother it as a present.

I wish my mother would be fine forever as well as cactuses lives for a long time.


By the way, I was also surprised at that the word "saboten" is not an English one. Saboten consists in "Sabao" from a Portuguese word which means soap and "te" from a Japanese word "手" which means hands. So it is a Nihongo term. I do not know why "te" has been attached. I guess that it is because some kinds of cactuses shape their leaves in the form of human kind.



P.S. Many policemen/policewomen were in trains on my way. It is because the summit is going to be opened. Furthermore Nihon have two childish and strange criminal acts recently. One is the Akihabara indiscriminate casualty incident and one is the case of scribbling a big word "hack" on a Shinkansen superexpress. So police had to get tense very much.

Nihon has been too safe. Something has recently gone wrong, though. Although I feel there are too many policeman/policewomen, I think it is OK.