Ueno Zoo
You can’t miss the entrance. If you are confused why everyone seems to have their umbrellas out on a sunny day, they are actually parasols to protect people from the beating sun. 1/2500 26.5mm F4.0 ISO 64.
Being a relatively small but historic zoo situated in a large park at the centre of a city, Ueno Zoo matches many other famous city zoos around the world including London Zoo. It is also Japan’s oldest zoo having opened in 1882. With animals and therefore zoos being of great interest to me, it should come as no surprise that within a week of arriving in Japan I paid this place a visit. Especially as there is one very big extra incentive to go – pandas.
Right from the start of the day, the queue to see Ri Ri and Shin Sin before they returned to China was very long. 1/320s 24mm F4.0 ISO 64.
The queue for Lei Lei was a much more manageable half an hour. 1/1000s 46mm F4.0 ISO 64>
Luckily there was a moment went Lei Lei looked this way. You only got two minutes to view her before you were moved on and it was a slightly surreal experiences to see a live panda for the first time. 1/400s 70mm F4.0 ISO 2500.
One of the most well-known animals on the planet, there are now remarkably no pandas in the UK. The last ones being sent back to China from Edinburgh Zoo almost exactly one year ago. London Zoo has had pandas in the past, but as China tightly controls who gets these iconic creatures, acquiring them is never easy. Funnily enough I was in Edinburgh a few weeks before the pandas were sent back (though I believe at that point they were in quarantine and not on display to the public) and when I visited Ueno Zoo this was also a few days before two of the four pandas were being sent back to China. Am I a bad omen?
There were plenty of other animals to see at Ueno, and ones that didn’t need extensive queueing either like these mongoose. 1/400s 200mm F2.8 ISO 320.
Degus made for a cute addition to Ueno Zoo. 1/400s 115mm F2.8 ISO 2500.
Hippos are perhaps the smelliest animals at any given zoo and on a hot day like this are often hiding below the water surface. 1/640s 200mm F2.8 ISO 640.
The zoo had four pandas, the parents Ri Ri and Shin Shin and their cubs born in 2021 named Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei. As the parents were aging it was them who were being sent back to China and with their final day approaching there was an enormous three-hour queue to see them. Something you’d expect more from a theme park than a zoo. Luckily for me it was only a half an hour wait to see Lei Lei so I opted to do that instead. This was my first time ever seeing a living panda, so it was a special moment. It’s quite clear that the Japanese are panda mad, with the gift shop stuffed to the brim with panda merchandise ready and waiting to fill the need. Heaven only knows what would happen if the last two pandas were to go back to China too.
Shooting this giraffe through the fence created an interesting bokeh effect. 1/200s 200mm F2.8 ISO 500.
Playing around in lightroom I thought monochrome suited this shot of a shoebill much better. 1/400s 200mm F2.8 ISO 250.
But of course colour suits flamingos much better. 1/400s 115mm F2.8 ISO 125.
For the Chris Packhams of the world, rest assured there’s more than just bamboo munchers. The zoo has the usual mixture of all things great and small, from indoor exhibitions that show off nocturnal animals to the big outdoor enclosures holding elephants, tigers and gorillas. Though much like London Zoo (before they were moved to Whipsnade) the enclosure for the elephants does seem to be a bit small. These older zoos were built as a time when animals welfare was far from the highest priority and being in the middle of the city there isn’t exactly huge amounts of room to expand.
Pangolins were also something I was keen to see, given how they are not often in Western zoos. The environment we were in was much darker than this photo implies and at first I struggled to locate it before realising it had buried itself in the wood chippings. 1/50s 70mm F2.8 ISO 3200.
The Japanese giant salamanders are like baby Godzillas. I took this shot as it surfaced for air, note how small its eye is. 1/50s 80mm F5.6 ISO 640.
The green iguana is a more familiar site in reptile houses around the world. 1/125s 120mm F4.0 ISO 1600.
However, for me the most special moment of the day come in the reptile house where I came face to face for the first time with the Japanese giant salamander. And they are big. We are so used to seeing amphibians as creatures that can fit in the palm of our hands, so seeing these prehistoric monsters at more than three feet long is quite a sight and they can grow as long as five feet! They really are a relic from a bygone era, and I hope conservation efforts can prevail in both Japan and China to keep these creatures alive for many more millennia.
A snake-necked turtle is one of the more amusing members of the turtle family. 1/200s 175mm F2.8 ISO 200.
Whereas the Galapagos giant tortoise is indisputedly the biggest. 1/200s 93mm F2.8 ISO 250.
The snowy owl is popular with Harry Potter fans due to the character of Hedwig. 1/160s 200mm F2.8 ISO 200.
The zoo also had the most species of bears that I’d ever seen in one place with the Hokkaido brown bear, polar bear, sun bears and Japanese black bears. Unfortunately being such a hot day, the polar bear was trying it’s best to hide away somewhere cool, so I saw little more than part of its rear end. A pity as I don’t think I’ve seen a polar bear since I was a child. The others were at least more forthcoming, but I can’t imagine somewhere like Tokyo and its very hot summers are an ideal place for an arctic animal.
Looking out over the large Shinobazu Pond reminds you that you are in the middle of the biggest city in the world. 1/400s 70mm F2.8 ISO 64.
The brown bear emerging from its den. 1/320s 200mm F2.8 ISO 1250.
Seeing a baby gorilla drew lots of positive responses from the crowd. 1/250s 78mm F2.8 ISO 1000.
In addition to the animals there are also two key structures that are well worth checking out. The first is the Kyu-Kanei-ji Pagoda and the second is the Thai Pavilion. The former is a lone survivor of what was once Japan’s largest temple complex dedicated to Buddhism. Founded in 1625 in honour of the shogunate and to ward off evil spirits that might threaten their reign, the temple buildings were poetically destroyed during the Battle of Ueno in 1868, when forces loyal to the shogunate were defeated by the Imperial army. Given that and how so many of these wooden buildings fall foul to fire, it’s remarkable that this pagoda still stands. Six of the fifteen shoguns are also buried nearby, though not accessible to the public. The Thai Pavilion (known as a sala) has a much less violent history, being a gift from the Thai government in 2007 to mark one hundred and twenty years of diplomatic relations.
Something caught the attention of this gibbon. 1/250s 70mm F2.8 ISO 2500.
Next to the old teahouse was a shishi-odoshi that is traditionally used to scare animals away from agricultural areas. Water steadily pours into the bamboo shaft until it tips over and then snaps back with a ‘clap’. 1/400s 70mm F2.8 ISO 500.
Most of the gift shop is unsurprisingly dedicated to pandas. The Japanese can’t seem to get enough of them. 1/60s 29.5mm F4.0 ISO 400.
As I hope you can gleam from this blog, there’s plenty of things to see at Ueno Zoo, be that animals or architecture and I saved the best point until last. It only costs ¥600 to visit which is barely more than £3 and less than 10% of the cost of visiting London Zoo. For me that is simply mind-blowing and at that price you really have no excuse not to go. It’s great that price is no barrier to entry for neither the residents of Tokyo nor the tourists who flock to this great city.
Kyu-Kanei-ji Pagoda which was once part of the much larger Kanei-ji Temple complex, situated North-East of Edo Castle. It was inspired by Enryaku-ji Temple which lies North East from Kyoto and both were designed to ward off evil spirits. 1/50s 24mm F4.0 ISO 160.
The Thai Pavilion (sala) is a great representation of the splendour of Thai culture. 1/60s 24mm F5.6 ISO 64.
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