Ueno Zoo is doing what it can to keep the line moving as fans come to say goodbye to Japan’s last pandas.

Earlier this week, Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo announced that its twin giant pandas, Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei, will be leaving Japan. Fans knew this would happen someday, as the pandas, though born at Ueno Zoo, are the children of a pair of pandas on loan from China as part of a breeding research initiative, and under the agreement any babies to come out of the project would eventually have to be transferred to China.

Still, with Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei being Ueno Zoo’s biggest stars, and also the final two pandas in Japan, people are going to be sad to see them go. Anticipating large crowds wanting to come to say goodbye, Ueno Zoo has said that advance online reservations will be required to enter the panda enclosure’s viewing area starting December 23, but in the meantime anyone who wants to can line up to see the twins.

With this coming weekend the last one before the reservation requirement goes into effect, the crowds are probably going to be massive. Perhaps anticipating that, some panda fans decided to get a jump on things by heading to Ueno Zoo on Tuesday morning. After all, an a.m. visit on a non-holiday weekday should mean relatively smaller crowds, right?

Sure, but “relatively smaller” doesn’t mean “smaller,” and on Tuesday, the line to see the pandas looked like this:

After noon, the waiting time was four hours, and with Ueno Zoo closing at 5 p.m. at this time of year, at 1 o’clock an announcement was made that the staff was closing off the line for the rest of the day.

Hearing this, one might be tempted to wonder if a contributing factor could have been people staying in the viewing area for an especially long time, trying to take as many literal and mental photos as they could of the soon-to-depart panda pair. But while there were for sure a lot of pictures snapped and memories made, they had to be done quickly, because in an attempt to keep the line moving, Ueno Park is limiting the panda-viewing time to just one minute per person.

The length of the line, even with that rule in place, shows just how strong the public’s desire is to see Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei one last time, especially since once they head to China, Japan will be without any pandas at all for the first time since 1972. It’s not clear whether or not there will be a viewing time limit in place once the reservation period starts, but Ueno Zoo says that it will be limiting the total number of guests in the panda-viewing area to 4,800 people from December 23 to 26. In addition, the zoo is now saying that starting January 14 reservation eligibility will be decided not on a first-come, first-served basis, but by a lottery system, as the number of people wanting to see them will only increase as we get closer to their final day of public display, January 25.

Source: TV Asahi via Hachima Kiko, Ueno Zoo, YouTube/ANNnewsCH
Top image: PR Times
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