Columbus Zoo

We drove down to Columbus today to visit the zoo. Miranda was particularly excited because they have a cougar there and she was finally going to get to see one up close. It's a great zoo--they don't have as many animals as our zoo here in Cleveland, but the exhibits are larger and the animals have more room to move around, as well as more natural looking settings. We walked around for five hours and were well worn out by the end. There was still time to stop at Japanese Bookstore I had heard about, New Japan

It was actually a gift shop, with books, stationary and other items. I felt the Sanrio stuff was pretty basic, mostly the sort of Hello Kitty items I could find in Cleveland, none of the less common characters. They had a few San-X characters, but no Nyan NyanKo, to Miranda's disappointment. And even worse, neither this store nor the Japanese grocery next to it had Konpeito, which the girls have been dying to try after seeing the Hamtaro episode about Diamonds of Sugar. I may just have to order some online. I had also hoped to maybe find issues of Cotton and Paint after coveting the copies I have seen others display online--no such luck. But they did carry used books as well as new ones, I got some children's books including an AIUEO book, and six crafting books, all about making baby/toddler clothes.I bought 11 books for a grand total of 20.00.


I had planned to sell a couple of them--do I really need more craft books? But as I look through them, each one has things I like and I can't decide which one to give up. Maybe I will wait a bit and look through them again. I am really happy with the books I found, but not sure it would be worth making the 2 hour trip again just to check out the store for anything new. They also carry Kumon work books which I find can be helpful for my own Japanese studies if I use the ones for young students, as well as kanji workbooks which previously I had been ordering from Japan off of Jbox.com. I could probably find some other things to do, and I am sort of owed a day out, as Brian is taking a business trip to Toronto in August and I will be home with the girls for a week.