Zoorasia

　　When we arrived in Yokohama, our daughter, her husband and our lovely one-year-and-eight-month-old granddaughter were waiting for us. That's why we visited Yokohama. We were going to spend a half day with our granddaughter in a zoo in Yokohama. I've visited Yokohama several times, but I've never dropped in at any zoo in Yokohama. Yokohama City has three zoos. Every zoo has its own distinctive characteristics. We picked one of them, "Zoorasia", which is a portmanteau word chosen by the public in 1996. It seems to bind "zoo" and "Eurasia" which has an image of an immensely vast continent with nature. Zoorasia has an aspect as a research institute as well as a zoo. It was divided into several areas like tundra, subtropical, rain forest district, etc. Every area has its characteristic vegetation. I used to visit a Canadian ski resort every two years and the sub-polar area reminded me of a Canadian cedar forest which I had seen in Whistler.
　　Anyway, it was the first time for our daughter to see real elephants, monkeys, lions, giraffes and so on. She knows a few animals like above, but her image of animals was obtained from illustrations in books for infants or from stuffed animals. She must have had no idea about the size of real elephants or giraffes. I was looking forward to observing her face at the first look at those big animals.
　　I was convinced that she probably understands monkeys, but maybe not lions or elephants. They didn't look so cute as ones in the baby's books or stuffed ones.

https://www.hama-midorinokyokai.or.jp/zoo/zoorasia/

(Vocabulary)
be chosen by the public 公募で選ばれた
subpolar 亜寒帯の