User:Abnormal Shrimp/Higashi Park (Okazaki City)

Higashi Park (東公園, Higashikōen) is a public park in Okazaki city, in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. It was first opened in April, 1928.

Overview
Entrance into the park as well as the accompanying zoo is free. The park contains several ponds, though these were originally used as resevoirs for irrigation purposes. Higashi Park's scenery varies by season. In spring there are Japanese cherry blossoms, in early summer hydrangeas and Japanese irises, and in fall the park takes on autumnal colors.

Higashi Park zoo (Okazaki zoo)
The Higashi Park zoo is a free-admission zoo first opened to the public on May 1st, 1983. The park is open from 9:00am to 4:30pm on all days except Monday (except for when Monday is a national holiday, in which case it will instead be closed on the next non-holiday day), and Japanese New Year holidays (December 29th - Janurary 2nd).

Higashi Park zoo keeps animals such as: Japanese deer, ponies, llamas, Japanese macaques, squirrel monkeys, prairie dogs, meerkats, Patagonian maras, flamingos, peafowl, sulphur-crested cockatoos, turquoise-fronted parrots, blue-and-yellow macaws, sheep, goats, African-spurred tortoises, rabbits, guinea pigs, and an Asian elephant named "Fujiko." There is also a petting zoo featuring some of the smaller animals.

Japanese iris garden
Opened to the public in 1964. The garden is open from May 27th to June 19th of every year in accordance with the "Iris Festival" (菖蒲まつり, Shōbumatsuri). During this time the area also features night-time lights. The garden is approximately 2,900 square meters in area, containing about 90~110 varieties of Iris and about 10,000 individual Japanese iris plants.

Okazaki animal center "Animo"
Opened to the public on March 29th, 2008. The Animo center was established to consolidate Okazaki's animal welfare, wildlife conservation, zoo management, and livestock management operations into a single facility. It is supervised by the city and public health department.

The aforementioned petting zoo also opened on March 29th along with the Animo center.

Dinosaur statues
In 2014, a charitable resident of Okazaki met with then-mayor Yasuhiro Uchida, who was proposing to develop a section of the park into a "dinosaur forest." The donor contributed one hundred million yen (at the time equal to approx. $100,000 USD) towards the project, which was used to install five dinosaur statues (a Brachiosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus, a Pteranodon, and two Triceratops) of varying sizes, the tallest of which being the 14 meter tall Brachisaurus. The dinosaur statues were completed and opened to the public on March 29th, 2015.

On March 1st, 2018, supported by another donation, two more statues were installed: a life-size Triceratops and a Spinosaurus whose back is a playground slide. In addition to the freestanding statues, four wooden benches with smaller dinosaur statues sitting on them were also introduced. It was at this point that this area of the zoo was renamed "Dinosaur square" (恐竜広場, Kyōryūhiroba).