Crazy Like A Fox

Setting a time limit makes everything seem urgent.  My current life timer is counting down til the end of June/beginning of July, when I'll leave Japan for at least a good long while.  Not only am I sure I'll be back, I'm already kind of planning on when: August 2020.  (That will give me a year to save up money so I can go to Drum Tao's taiko extravaganza that they hold on Kyushu every summer.)  In the meantime, there are things I've got to do before I leave, just in case the great catfish finally sinks the country before I get back.  That's why as soon as our bloody open house was over on Saturday*, I walked over to Yokohama Station and hopped the train up to Tokyo Station, where I caught a shinkansen for the second time in a month, this time heading to Shiroishi.  The next thing I needed to check off my Japan bucket list was the Miyagi Zao Fox Village.

This was a thing Sensei had never heard of before, but Baby Chicken Wing had - she actually asked me before I moved here if I was going to go.  "Hell yes," was the answer, although I never quite figured out when I was going to go.  Thanks to my new shinkansen addiction and what was left of my three-day weekend when the school was done with me, I decided the time was ripe.  The night before I'd finally sat down to find a hotel for the night.  Booking.com set me up with a hotel next to the station for about $80, and if it didn't have a hot spring, it DID have electric air conditioners, unlike the ryokan I stayed at in Jigokudani.  The hotel restaurant, with its all-you-can-eat shabu shabu was just a bonus.  I didn't even care to go out and have a look around that night - just read and relaxed.

The next morning, though, I was out by eight on a mission.  That night I'd run up against a snag - apparently the bus that goes up to the fox village only goes on Tuesdays and Fridays.  This is honestly the stupidest foxing thing I've ever heard: that the main tourist attraction of a very small town only has a bus service on weekdays.  According to the hotel desk, there was no other bus.  I suspected shenanigans, so I asked Sensei to look in Japanese while I wrestled the interwebs in English.  There seemed to be another bus at some point in the past, so I went out looking for it Sunday morning, but had no luck.  Which was too bad, but I stumbled across an interesting shrine and had a closer look at Shiroishi Castle while I was at it.

See, if you can't take a bus to the Fox Village, you're stuck taking a taxi, which costs 4,000 yen each way.  Now when I was a rich art teacher in from Mongolia I wouldn't have given two fox about paying up, but on my current salary with my current expenses, 80 bucks roundtrip is more than I can pay (hell, that's pretty much what my hotel cost).  So when I got back to the station I followed Sensei's suggestion** and held up a drawing of a fox in my sketchbook with the word ikitai in hopes I'd make new friends.  I didn't.  But when I finally decided to suck it up and just go pay for the cab, there were two Taiwanese guys waiting for the cab they'd called, and they asked if I wanted to share.

So finally I was on my way.  It took about a half hour on snowy, winding roads to get there, but finally we pulled up to the main gate.  I carried some trepidations with me.  On the ride up I read some of their recent Tripadvisor reviews and they were pretty bad, complaining about the smell, rude staff, and animal cruelty.  I was at least a little worried it was going to turn out to be a huge waste of money, but I wasn't willing to write it off for a loss.  So I paid my 1,000 yen and followed the sound of yips inside.

Your first glance of the foxes is through cages.  This seemed a little cruel at first, but later I figured out that these were the ones that they use for the optional fox petting experience.  Presumably they have to raise them to be tame enough to be handled by tourists...or else drugged.  In either case, I'm guessing that keeping them with the free-range foxes probably isn't a great idea.

I moved pretty quickly into that enclosure, since that is really what the trek out there is all about.  I was barely through the door when I found two foxes right in front of me, so I grabbed my camera, only to have the gatekeeper tell me not to take pictures.  This was something that was mentioned in one of the Tripadvisor reviews, and for a second I was worried I wouldn't be able to indulge my shutterbug tendencies.  But as I looked around I realized plenty of people were taking photos - just not by the entrance.  So I moved away and started shooting.  On my way out I saw a sign that said the foxes often attack by the entrance - apparently that's why they forbid photography in that area.

I moved on.  There were foxes everywhere, mostly red foxes but there were other breeds and colors, too.  Some of them nipped and postured at each other.  Others were sleeping.  At least one vixen was in heat, because she had several suitors fighting over whose turn it was to "do it like they do on the Discovery channel."

There was definitely a smell, but that goes with the territory.  Animals have smells.  In this case, it was the smell of musk, not urine or poop.  Don't get me wrong - it wasn't really a pleasing aroma, and I still had the ghost of it lingering in my nose til I was halfway back to Tokyo.  But the enclosure didn't seem to be dirty - I didn't find myself trying not to step in shit the way I remember doing as a child when I visited a certain family member with two big Rottweilers and a very small yard.

They had treats that you could buy to feed the foxes.  I didn't get any.  In order to feed them, you go onto a raised platform...kind of like a detached porch?...and toss them to the foxes waiting below.  Not the touching nature experience that you hope for when you hear "feed the animals."  I'm not complaining, really - there was ample evidence that these animals were not pets, not to mention the fact that the staff let you know what not to do and that they weren't responsible if you got your dumb ass bitten.  I crossed that experience off my bucket list as a child that time my Dad let me feed the ostrich through the window at the nature safari around Springfield, and I'm not really in any hurry to repeat it.  But I also didn't feel like spending any more money that day.

There was a...well-worn...Inari shrine in the park as well.  Of all the things to complain about, I think this is the one that actually bothers me.  It's not that I give zero fox about animal rights.  I do, I promise - I just don't think these foxes are particularly mistreated.  The "shrine," on the other hand, seemed like a particularly half-assed attempt to lend an air of legitimacy to the fox village.  We're in Japan, bitches.  This is a country that has been known to build train stations around sacred trees, rather than cutting them down.  The torii were pretty beaten up, and the shrine itself looked more like a chicken coop than housing for the gods.  That didn't stop me from trying to get a good picture; it just made me a little less disappointed when it didn't really happen.

So those are my thoughts on the fox village.  Not the worst way to spend a weekend, although it would have been nice if I could have managed to go to the nearby Kokeshi village (this is the second doll museum with a painting experience I've passed up on these trips, which makes me think I'm going to have to do a grand tour of Japanese dolls on a future trip back to Japan) - as it was I didn't want to pay for another taxi.   For now, I'm grounding myself from road trips until May (aka, firefly squid, take 2)...at least, unless I can figure out how to afford a trip on the Royal Express.  I hear Shizuoka's beautiful this time of year...


*How much do I look forward to not having to work one Saturday a month as of August???  SO much!
**Actually her suggestion was hitchhiking.  And it probably would have been perfectly safe to do so here in Japan, but I wasn't in the mood to stand out in the cold.  Also, I had the small sketchbook, so I wasn't sure if anyone would get the message as they zipped past.