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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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