Spring 2025 Japan trip planning

I went to Tama Zoo on Sunday. People say this zoo is hilly, but I think that’s a lie. The Smithsonian Zoo is hilly. Tama was on completely different order of magnitude. This zoo is mountainous.

Regardless, I enjoyed my time here. On the whole, the exhibits were very good, and I got to see all of my target species. I was a bit disappointed to discover that the mole house was largely empty and signed as such, with just Japanese mole being visible on exhibit, but I’ll take it.

There were a few exhibits that were real head scratchers, like the owl row that felt like it was cobbled together by someone’s scraps following a Home Depot project as so many American roadside zoos are, but on the flip side, its larger exhibits were truly jaw dropping. I’ve never seen anything quite like the large eagle aviary, and the orangutan exhibit kept going and going… and then I saw the skyline that let it keep going still.

The Tasmanian devil was what stole my heart, though. All it was doing was turning in its sleep and that was enough to captivate me - I’d never seen one before. I wound up buying a Tasmanian devil tote bag on the way out since I’d come to realize just how important having some kind of bag is here.

Compared to the last posted species list, Pere David’s deer and red junglefowl seem to be gone, but all of the walkthrough aviaries were open. I did see the magpie goose, which some were inquiring about in that thread. I also saw the little grebe, another fun lifer, meaning I got to leave the zoo adding new categories to my life list spreadsheet for moles, dasyurids, and grebes. It’s increasingly rare to add any at all, so three in one visit felt nice.

Not zoo-related, but I’m really struggling to identify wild birds here. Granted, at least 80% of them are crows, but my usual savior Merlin sound ID has been totally, completely useless and I’ve usually been moving too fast to get good visuals on the rest of them. Oh well. I wish I knew which of the egrets I’m seeing if nothing else.

Edited to add: in the US, any “sugar gliders” are generally thought to actually be Krefft's gliders. Anyone know if Tama’s sugar glider might actually be one?
 
It was way bigger than I expected! It was resting so I didn’t spend too much time with it, but I was still very excited to get to see it. If you couldn’t see its face, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a plump lemur, which I don’t think pictures could have ever conveyed.
 
Unfortunately, the last raccoon dog at Inokashira passed away a few months ago. However, you should be able to see a young Japanese serow born two months ago. It often sits very close to its parent and can be hard to spot, so make sure you don’t miss it.

At SCZ, there should be two quokka joeys that are already out of the pouch, so you’ll be able to observe them very well. As you may already know, the opening hours for Quokka Island differ between weekdays and weekends, so please keep that in mind. Also, there are several rare rodents housed in the stable, so be sure not to overlook them either.
 
One thing that I forgot to mention about Zoorasia, that I’d never seen brought up here or elsewhere in all of my research, was their small taxidermy collection consisting of former zoo residents. This includes their former onager, who died as recently as 2022, as well as several rare tree kangaroos (grizzled, ursine, and a Goodfellow's, although they still have that last species). I’m kicking myself for not taking better pictures of the detailed write ups next to each species - I’d love to be able to read more about these animals in their lives, and why they of all the zoo’s animals were selected to be preserved. At first I was a bit confused as to why such a commonplace animal as an ocelot was amongst this collection until I just remembered where I am - there don’t seem to be any ocelots currently in Japan per ZTL.

Are there other zoos that do this, and it’s just more commonplace than I realized so nobody’s felt it was worth bringing up? I’ve seen plenty of instances of taxidermy zoo specimens being kept at a nearby museum, and then there’s things like Montgomery Zoo’s shockingly nice taxidermy collection, but those obviously weren’t former residents. It’s such an interesting concept, if a bit haunting, that I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw it.
 
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I previously asked about Japan’s sugar gliders in comparison to America’s apparent Krefft’s gliders called sugar gliders, but thinking on it, I’ve got a similar question for two other species: are Japan's reticulated giraffes actually genuine non-generic reticulateds? And how about Ueno’s crested porcupine - what are the odds it’s an actual crested and not cape like the vast majority of American “crested” porcupines? Mainly just curious so that I can make an ultimately meaningless distinction on my life list.

I did visit both Ueno Zoo and Saitama Children's Zio over the weekend and intend to write a bit about both of them sometime soon. I didn’t dislike either of them, but Zoorasia is still my #1 of the four I’ve visited here. Next weekend was supposed to be Inokashira Park Zoo, but the weather has me a bit apprehensive so who knows how things will shake out.
 
I visited Ueno Zoo on 9/13. Ueno's got quite the reputation for having a lot of poor, outdated exhibits, and it's impossible to disagree with this after visiting the zoo. There were some truly depressing exhibits at this zoo, no sugar coating it. But for better or worse, that's certainly not all there was to Ueno. There were actually quite a few exhibits I really liked, and the grounds themselves were beautiful. Despite the quality of many of its exhibits, pretty much everything else at Ueno cemented it as easily the most attractive zoo of the five I visited (the other four, ranked in the same regard: Zoorasia, Inokashira Park, Tama, and lastly Saitama Children's Zoo). Beautiful Japanese sculptures and architecture and vegetation were everywhere, and while they couldn't possibly offset the poorer exhibits, they certainly did a good job of softening my memories of the place.

There really were some good exhibits. The Japanese bird aviaries near the eastern entrance, the large tiger and gorilla exhibits, several of the birds of prey, the tapirs, most of the reptile house, and most of the wading birds in the western half all seemed very well suited. The gibbons lacked in lateral space, but at least had one of the most vertical gibbon exhibits I've ever seen.

There were plenty of poor exhibits too, though. The zoo has its reputation for a reason. The outdoor monkey exhibits were all too small and dingy, and there were way too many guerezas in particular. The wading birds and secretarybirds in the eastern half had pitiful enclosures. The aardvark exhibit seemed far too small, and more distressingly, was completely barren with nothing but wood chip flooring. But by far the worst exhibits went to the African ungulates - there were five exhibits spread across hippopotamus, pygmy hippopotamus, and black rhinoceros. You could have combined all five of them and devoted it to a single one of those species and it still would have probably made for just an okay pygmy hippo exhibit or a still-too-small one for the full-size hippos or rhinos. These exhibits would have felt outdated 50 years ago. And the strangest part is that I feel like these aren't the exhibits I see decried most often - most people rightfully hone in on the monkeys, wading birds, or small mammal house, but these felt like a different level of egregious. It was made all the more upsetting when contrasted with, again, just how nicely upkept the zoo was and how attractive the areas around the exhibits were. With your typical American roadside zoo with tiny exhibits, the quality of the exhibits at least tends to match the vibe of the zoo - dusty, dingy, hastily thrown together inside and out. To see such pitiful exhibits all dressed up in a nice coat of paint was jarring, to say the least.

All that said, I don't regret visiting at all, as I'd feared I might. I got to see some truly incredible species here that I can't imagine I'll have an opportunity to anywhere else in the near future, if ever - Chinese pangolin, Prince Demidoff's bushbaby, tarsier, black lemur, and the only active masked palm civet and Japanese serow from my trip. And above all, I can see real potential for this zoo, and the master plan that was just put out fairly recently inspires hope that they'll be focusing on the correct areas. If they can cut back on a few species here and there and close the gap in exhibitry between their worst exhibits (hippos, rhinos, monkeys, wading birds on the eastern half) and the best exhibits (tigers, gorillas, wading birds on the western half), then I think it wouldn't even take that much effort in the grand scheme of things to turn this into a zoo befitting its title of Tokyo's most iconic zoo.
 
On 9/14 I visited Saitama Children's Zoo. This was an odd one, for sure. It was filled to the brim with astonishingly rare species (at least from my American perspective) such as gundis, bush hyraxes, Chacoan maras, and of course quokkas, but at the same time it felt distinctly the most "non-AZA" of the zoos I visited, to use a comparison that reinforces that American perspective.

All of the other zoos were at least reasonably pretty to traverse through, but Saitama felt... kinda dumpy in places? There were several (too small) aviaries in particular that required you to walk a good ways out onto unpaved ground (which was very muddy at the time of my visit), and the zoo's emu kennel may have been the single worst enclosure I saw during my trip. The zoo was super spread out over vast stretches of nothing compelling, with several sections seemingly devoted to activities such as day-camping rather than anything strictly zoo-related. And while I have nothing against those who want to have a multipurpose zoo visit or zoos who want to encourage it, I wasn't expecting it and it certainly didn't do anything for me.

But by and large the exhibits seemed very adequate, and it was a real delight getting to see so many unusual small mammals. Even species I'd seen plenty of times seemed to take in some extra spotlight, such as the only active tamandua I've ever seen - and it was active. I may as well have been seeing the species for the first time.

Unfortunately Saitama was home to the only personally notable miss on the entire trip - the plains viscachas just would not come out for me. This may well have been my only chance to ever see this species. Still, I consider it an overall victory that I managed to see literally everything else I considered a top priority across all 5 zoos.

While it's certainly not unique to Saitama, I'll write about it here. One thing I absolutely loved about Japanese zoos was their eagerness to acknowledge their star species and focus on original merch for them. As a kid, it drove me crazy that every zoo I visited seemed to have the same generic merchandise focusing on the same dozen or so African megafauna, and it was even worse when the zoos often didn't even keep the animals they were selling merch for. But Japanese zoos will fixate on usually 3-6 species that they actually keep, and just go all in on merch for them, and even find excuses to offer products for their less iconic species - what American zoo would be caught dead offering a Prince Demidoff's bushbaby hand towel, or gundi-shaped mochi? (ignore the fact that these species aren't kept in America). For Saitama, it was naturally their quokkas that got the lion's share of the merch, but there were also sizeable sections devoted to their Pallas's cats and capybaras. For Ueno, it was their pandas, but also their shoebills, elephants, and again Pallas's cats. Zoorasia naturally honed in on their okapis and proboscis monkeys as well as their red pandas, Tama had a whole collection devoted to their Tasmanian devils, and Inokashira Park was unafraid to go all in on squirrel, guinea pig, and leopard cat merch. And while I'll often visit a dozen or more zoos in a row in the US without buying a single souvenir, I splurged to various extents at all of these. I spent at least $100 US at both Zoorasia and Ueno.

Lastly, one final Saitama-specific thing that I think bears mentioning (because it so often gets glossed over online) is the Beatrix Potter museum nestled in its center. There is scant information on this online and fewer pictures, so I had assumed it was just a "step inside, look around, walk back out 2 minutes later" type deal. No, it was a proper museum. A small one to be sure, but in stark contrast to the often dusty rest of the zoo, it was actually presented and curated like any other museum I've ever visited. My wife is a big fan of Beatrix Potter's work, so she was absolutely entranced the whole time. Lots of original drafts and letters, and a whole reference library of books that you're free to browse. No photos were allowed outside of a single room, explaining the lack of them online. Entrance is a cash-only 200 yen - a very trivial fee, but worth being aware of if you want to visit and enter the park without cash as we did. There are no ATMs inside the zoo, and the nearest konbini is a 15 minute walk away. I was preparing to make this trek because I knew how much my wife wanted to visit the museum, but thankfully we were saved by another helpful tourist who I suppose recognized my distress and spotted us the cash to get in. I offered her some American cash as a souvenir in exchange, but she declined even that. Truly an angel.

So that's Saitama Children's Zoo. Given how spread out it all was, I can't say it's a top priority to revisit in a future trip, even though I would love another shot at seeing a viscacha. I'd put it above the Tama mountain range in terms of likelihood to return, but I think that's about it. Still, I had fun, super glad I was able to visit.
 
Guess I'll wrap it up today by discussing Inokashira Park Zoo, which I visited on 9/20. It was easily the smallest zoo I visited, despite having two distinct campuses similar to Ueno. This was a good thing, because after Tama, Saitama, and to a lesser extent Ueno, I was a bit worn out from all these more spread out zoos. Overall the zoo was nice and well organized, and seemed to have generally suitable exhibits - nothing at all stands out as bad in my memory, a distinction shared only with Zoorasia.

With a few exceptions, Inokashira Park Zoo focuses on native Japanese species - off the top of my head the only exceptions in the main section may have been Humboldt penguins, fennec foxes, capybaras, and maras, as well as the strange but welcome inclusion of rhesus macaques over the standard Japanese macaques that all of the others besides Saitama held. This native focus meant there was a lot of redundancy with other collections I'd visited, for better or worse, but they also had a fair few native species I hadn't seen elsewhere, such as wild boar, Japanese sparrowhawk, copper pheasant, both subspecies of Japanese marten, and thankfully both little and intermediate egrets, keeping me from having to agonize over which egret species I'd been seeing in the wild the whole time. I got worse looks at the Japanese fox and masked palm civet here as well as missing out on the Japanese giant flying squirrel entirely, but better looks at Japanese squirrel, Japanese badger, and especially the Tsushima leopard cats, so it really did form a nice balance in the end.

The leopard cats in particular were incredible - I got to see several of them being super active and up close. I knew they were in the same genus, but I really was not prepared for just how much they resemble fishing cats. You could've convinced me they were hybrid fishing/rusty spotted cats, honestly.

An approaching rain storm meant I got less time than I would have preferred to at the Aquatic Life Park, the southern section that houses aquatic birds in addition to a small aquarium/herp house. I got to see everything, thankfully, but I easily could have spent twice as long here. I'm not a big fish person (they're fine) so it was kind of neat getting to see all of these native fish whose names I only recognized from the Animal Crossing franchise. I also got to see a wild little grebe in a nearby pond, as well as dozens of rose-ringed parakeets that have apparently formed a feral colony throughout the park.

I don't recall if I've reiterated it enough for anyone reading to remember, but the "trip" that this thread was originally made about was intended to be a purely vacation trip in the spring of this year, as the title suggests. Various things happened resulting in that trip getting delayed until next year, and then miraculously I had a lengthy business trip to Japan materialize instead, which allowed me to visit all 5 of my top priority zoos. The originally planned trip is still on for next year - I've been dying to return to Japan every day since I've been back home. We're currently shooting for late October or November of next year now for the better weather. I'm not sure what my animal-related plans are for that trip. I'll obviously be eager to do something, but considering I was fortunate enough to see literally everything I set out to short of the plains viscacha, I'm practically at square one in terms of figuring out where to go next year. My wife sort of assumed I'd want to do Saitama again for another shot at the viscacha, but I'm not sure where my priorities will fall once I've done a bit more research. I'll always be eager to see novel mammals above all else, and I think at this point this means need to (somewhat ironically) hone in on aquariums and figure out which ones have the most interesting pinnipeds and cetaceans. But I could easily, easily see myself wanting to return to Zoorasia - it was everything I had hoped for. I could also see myself returning to Ueno, so that my wife can go with me and see the parts of it I enjoyed for herself. But I also think a return trip to Inokashira Park isn't off the table entirely, since we're currently thinking about staying in the surrounding neighborhood of Kichijoji again, as we did for the final weekend of the trip. Lots of stuff to figure out, basically. So I guess stay tuned for part 2~

Edit: Almost forgot! Per the suggestion of @Chlidonais, I visited Kasai Rinkai Park on 9/21 to look for wild tanuki. No luck, unfortunately. I went to the areas outlined in the Big Year thread, and there were no tanukis to be found. Not sure if it was the warmer weather that kept them in hiding, or if it was strictly bad luck, but we both loved the park itself so we'll be returning next year regardless. Hopefully the cooler weather is more agreeable for them.
 
Veno said:
Unfortunately, the last raccoon dog at Inokashira passed away a few months ago. However, you should be able to see a young Japanese serow born two months ago. It often sits very close to its parent and can be hard to spot, so make sure you don’t miss it.

At SCZ, there should be two quokka joeys that are already out of the pouch, so you’ll be able to observe them very well. As you may already know, the opening hours for Quokka Island differ between weekdays and weekends, so please keep that in mind. Also, there are several rare rodents housed in the stable, so be sure not to overlook them either.
Click to expand...
Rereading some of the older posts in this thread and this one stood out. I saw both the baby serow which I remembered you mentioning, and also the younger quokkas. But I think I may have overlooked the rare rodents in the stable… what were they? I saw all of the ones inside the small mammal house (or at least their enclosures…) as well as the Chacoan maras outside, but what else was there? I guess returning here was already a “maybe” (really, the only zoo that I definitely wouldn’t return to is Mount Tama) but it could easily be bumped up if I missed more than the viscachas.
 
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