People Bid Farewell to Ueno Zoo Pandas on Final Viewing Day

(The third paragraph from the bottom should have read, “…Samizo,” instead of as sent. A substitute story follows.) People Bid Farewell to Ueno Zoo Pandas on Final Viewing Day Tokyo, Jan. 25 (Jiji Press)–Ahead of Tuesday’s departure for China of the only remaining giant pandas in Japan, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei of Ueno Zoo, people who won tickets through a prior lottery crowded the Tokyo zoo to bid them farewell on Sunday, the final viewing day for the male-female twins. Once the four-year-old twins leave for China, Japan will be without giant pandas for the first time in about half a century. Giant pandas first came to Japan in 1972. To commemorate the year’s normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, Kang Kang and Lan Lan, a male-female pair, were gifted to Ueno Zoo, sparking an unprecedented panda craze at the zoo. After that, pandas were also raised in the town of Shirahama in Wakayama Prefecture and in the city of Kobe in Hyogo Prefecture, both in western Japan, but the only ones currently living in Japan are the twins born at Ueno Zoo in 2021. To avoid confusion, the zoo adopted a lottery system in which prospective visitors were asked to apply for tickets in advance for viewing from Jan. 14. There was a flood of applications for Sunday’s 4,400 viewing slots, with the competition rate reaching 24.6 times. The twins were born to parents loaned for breeding research purposes, so ownership remains with China. Yuzuki Tsuzuki, a six-year-old from the city of Fuchu in western Tokyo, who came to see the twin pandas with her mother and grandmother, said excitedly, “They were big!” Waving at the twins, she said: “Stay well even after you go to China. Make sure you eat plenty of food.” Rikako Samizo, 31, who visited the zoo with her two-year-old daughter, Reira, smiled and said, “I’m glad my daughter enjoyed (seeing the twins).” Reira smiled at her mother and said, “They were cute.” Kanako Ito, 20, a university student from Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, sighed: “They were a source of comfort. I’ll miss them.” Ito, whose love for pandas led her to study Chinese at university, said, “I want to visit China someday.” Sachiko Makita, a 43-year-old office worker from Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, who had visited the zoo almost every month, murmured sadly: “Just stay well. Please come back again.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]