Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Cuddly Dominion.

Far from being an S&M club or a homosexual death metal band like the name suggests, Cuddly Dominion is a zoo, of sorts, in Kumamoto prefecture.

Nestled in the heart of the Aso volcanic region and surrounded by a constant cloud of sulphur, Cuddly Dominion is therefore a place that would smell uncomfortably of shit even without the presence of hundreds of animals. The main attraction of Cuddly Dominion is bears, although I found that the park offered so much more entertainment than merely looking at bears.

Because you see this place wasn’t so much a bear zoo as it was some kind of third-world bear PRISON.

Walking around the park with its bare, grey cell-like concrete cages with no shelter at all, and watching bears who’s desire to escape was so great they would probably fashion ladders out of their own cack or learn English and scrawl “somebody call the fricking WWF” on the walls with their claws if they weren’t so inherently stupid an animal, was actually quite depressing even for a person like me who is very much amused when animals get hurt, desensitised through years of Road Runner cartoons and Funniest Home Videos where someone’s dog falls down the stairs or jumps to catch a Frisbee and slams straight into a wall.

All the bears were just glumly sitting about, clearly well past completely fricking insane from boredom, their stillness interjected frequently by little kids throwing bits of bread at them which then sort of pathetically bounced off their faces and fell on the ground.

The bears at Cuddly Dominion, so heavily sedated, do little to entertain the crowd in such instances and so it becomes a game in itself to see which part of the bear you can hit with bread, and thus you end up with a sight common at Cuddly Dominion - bears covered and surrounded by bits of soggy bread, with no bear wanting to touch any of it through a total and complete indifference to bread after years and years of being fed nothing but- bread.

There really isn’t anything funny about watching such blatant cruelty; apart from the fact that it gives you the opportunity to give the bears nicknames, in a Care Bear stylee. So ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Calamity Bears (TM):

Twisty Bear: This bear’s special power is to be curiously tied up to a pole whilst the others roam free, meaning he has nowhere to go but round and round in a perfect circle. The concrete floor doesn’t afford him the comedic luxury of a donut-shaped hole formed from his own continuous walking, so he plods on regardless with pretty much no purpose in life whatsoever.

Crazy Staring Bear: The loveable Crazy Staring Bear is like a kind of furry rock as it sits completely motionless staring at the waves of people passing by him each day. Is he meditating? Really pissed off? Dead? No one knows, but Crazy Staring Bear can melt your brain if you look at him in the eyes for too long so watch the frick out.

Totally Off His Face On Sedatives Bear: This common bear can usually be found hanging in some mangled position from the climbing apparatus he was trying to climb just when his sedatives started to kick in. Usually caught by a leg, Totally Off His Face On Sedatives bear defies gravity as he dangles precariously, asleep, with his tongue hanging out and eyes turned back into his head. And bread all over his face and body.

Banging Furiously On Walls Bear: Possibly the most volatile of all the Calamity Bears, Banging Furiously On Walls Bear is also really good with nunchukas. Banging Furiously On Walls Bear can usually be heard in his solitary confinement cell smashing the walls in a rhythmic manner, which the zoo attendants duly ignore because “he’ll stop when his paws start bleeding, anyway”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2004 at 8:27 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.