As for Ling Ling, when I was there people seemed waaay more interested in the giant, stylised statue of her than actually visiting her cage in the flesh—There was actually a queue of people trying to get their photo taken with the statue!

Since Ueno Zoo is so small, they should drastically reduce the number of animals displayed and redo the habitats using modern best practices. Perhaps set up something like in San Diego, where the Zoo works together with the Wild Animal Park (large open space) in Escondido.

I haven’t been recently, but Zoorasia in Yokohama was pretty good when I went 8 years ago.
http://www.zoorasia.org/

Asahiyama zoo in the middle of Hokkaido does a booming trade and from what I’ve seen on telly is humane amount the cage layouts and fixtures. I wonder how aware the visitors are when deciding to visit.

She’s a national treasure.

“Hi there, my Panda just died. I think it’s the power supply, it’s an old one anyhow. Can you send me a replacement?”

Tokyo is the capital of the worlds 2nd largest economy and yet Ueno Zoo remains one of the WORST zoos. Ishihara Tochiji, are you listening? It’s a disgrace.

Still, if it gets back those 600,000 customers, it’s worth it, right?

They’re not displaying the stuffed corpse of Ling Ling, are they? That would be rather morbid.

Oops- forgot to mention that in the post. I’ve edited it to include a sentence about it.

The reporter actually says that a lot of people have been visiting that museum to see Ling Ling, but I doubt panda-loving children who visit zoos would be very happy with the exhibit.

Lesser pandas (we called them red pandas when I was a kid) are adorable too, but there is something special about giant pandas. The Oji Zoo in Kobe has one and it makes the rest of the (substandard, frankly) zoo more enjoyable. Do they need the governor’s permission to request one? Maybe they can borrow the baby panda born in Wakayama last year?