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.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]