4 Visitations of Terror

Today our wandering took us to Hokkaido University and the University Museum there, and from there to a fabulous vegetarian restaurant, and from there to Sapporo Station so that I could show Bunny all four of the malls that converge there. Sapporo University Museum by the way, is pretty fun for a free museum based at a University. It has all manner of academic and researched based exhibits, but it also has skeletons of dinosaurs and animals, bugs in cases and wax models of body parts with horrific skin conditions.

On our wanderings I came across four signs - omens or portents, I'm not sure which - that chilled my blood and filled me with dread and foreboding. Or dread foreboding, if you'll allow it. What can we read into these four visitations?

fig i : The skeleton of a duck at Hokkaido University Museum

fig. ii : The skull of a tapir at Hokkaido University Museum.

fig iii : Terebi-Tou San (the personified mascot version of Sapporo's TV Tower) and a Donkey-Creature outside Sapporo Station, dancing.

fig. iv : A monstrous Pikachu, worshipped by a line of small children who queued up to enter between its legs.