The Japanese LOVE pandas! Why? Because Japanese love ‘cute’. And pandas are about as cute as they come, at least in terms of animals “in the wild”.
China provides the pandas for the entire world. The first pandas were given to Japan in 1972 as a gesture of friendship, when relations between the two countries finally became normalized. Since then, many pandas have become temporary residents of Japan. Currently, there are six: two are in the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, and four live at Adventure World in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture.
Japan’s favorite panda was Tan Tan. She lived at the Kobe Zoo from 2000.
Sadly, Tan Tan passed away just last year. The outpouring of grief across Japan was extremely intense. Japanese people were so attached to her, they responded as if they had lost a member of their own families.
Unfortunately, the heartbreak doesn’t end there. It seems that all of the contracts for loaning pandas to Japan are all ending very soon. By end of summer, at least as things currently stand, there will be no more pandas here. They are all being returned to Chengdu, China, the panda capital of the world. Most of the pandas living in Chengdu — there are literally hundreds of them — are not confined but allowed to roam in a natural habitat.
As I previously mentioned, there are four pandas living at Adventure World. Masumi found out they are scheduled to go into quarantine in May, then be sent back to China in June. Two days after she heard the announcement, we got in our car and drove 3 1/2 hours to get a last glimpse and say our good-byes.
By the way, Japan did a very good job of breeding pandas. Over the years 17 new pandas were born at Adventure World. When they reached maturity, since they belonged to China, they also were sent back “home”.
Adventure World is aptly named. It’s a family-oriented fun adventure built around a huge safari park, home to a wide variety of animals, large and small: one hippo, four rhinos, too many monkeys to count, lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, bears, at least one cheetah, giant tortoises, flamingos, an amazing variety of exotic and tropical birds, penguins, seals, otters, dolphins, on and on. Most of the animals are surprisingly tame. For example, visitors can feed a lion, the hippo, the rhinos, giraffes, monkeys, etc.
There are all sorts of rides. It’s been decades since Masumi and I rode a jet coaster — known in the west as a roller coaster — so we spent four minutes on that ride laughing and screaming at the top of our lungs.
We opted to “walk” the safari route rather than ride in the safari train, which allowed us very close proximity to some of the animals. Masumi stood right next to a giraffe, which gives you a head-spinning grasp of how tall and totally weird these creatures are.
Of course, there are restaurants and souvenir shops stuffed with panda paraphernalia. Most of the employees wear panda ears. There’s a panda train, panda bus, panda food, panda pavilion. I’m wondering how this park will survive if they are unable to negotiate new panda contracts very soon.
Considering it was essentially a “sad” day, in that we were bidding the pandas a farewell, we had a rollicking good time!
[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]
