Tama Zoological Park — Attraction in Tokyo

Not recommended. Depressing experience & total disappointment.

Fancy toilets, retail shops & picnic areas at the expense of animal welfare. Disgusting.

Utterly miserable & depressing seeing majestic animals in tight, poorly laid out enclosures that lack enrichment for the animals. The Asian Elephant habitat was horrible, two elephants cramped into a narrow concrete space with a big solid metal bar cage at one end (is it supposed to provide shelter?), nothing to play with & only enough room to walk in a straight line back/forth.

Also saw one lonely rhino in a small rectangular pen with a single tree in the middle, basically its supposed to just walk in circles all day, so sad.

Lions enclosure is another sad case just two skinny male lions locked in a pit. So many of the animals lack ample room to roam & looked miserable, worse than being in prison.

Several large animal species were kept in small pens & small animals in oversized enclosures. Space planning & allocation here is ridiculous.

Although the African enclosure was undergoing renovation, it is no excuse for the substandard living conditions of the existing non-African exhibits.

The park is huge but lacks effective space planning. Space is wasted on too many fancy toilets, food kiosks & picnic areas when there's not even sufficient visitors to use all of them, most were empty. So unnecessary.

There's practically a toilet & picnic area at every turn while animals are cramped in lousy quarters. We also noticed several plots of unused land within the park that could have been better allocated to the animals.

Not friendly for wheelchair or people with disabilities due to many uphill, winding paths.

Park has great potential but fails to deliver. Poor use of a large space. Priority should be given to improving the quality of life & habitats for the animals in captivity.

These people are seriously unqualified & have no business running a zoo.

This is supposed to be a zoological park, instead of a...

You can visit this zoo mostly guilt-free. I usually avoid zoos in Japan because of the poor conditions for animals, but a friend convinced me to try the Tama zoo.

I was surprised and relieved! Most animals have a large enclosure with space to roam and I only saw two with signs of stress (pacing, plucking). There are no animal shows, thank goodness. Most animals can hide and take a break from viewing if they want. A few enclosures are too small, but it seems like they are renovating. A huge new enclosure for the endangered Japanese Toki is set to be completed in 2026.

In particular I was impressed by the huge walkthrough aviary, butterfly insectarium, and vast climbing structures for the orangutans.

Because of the large enclosures, it is a big zoo. It can take a whole day to visit, and some animal viewings stop at 4PM, so I recommend coming early. For those that tire easily or with small kids, there is a free shuttle bus that goes up the biggest "hill". There are many picnic spots, but there are many vending machines and some snack counters too. I appreciate their efforts to switch to compostable utensils.

In May 2025 it costs only 600円 to visit the zoo. If you plan to do the Lion Bus (500円) on a busy day, I recommend purchasing the tickets online (QR code) in advance, otherwise you have to wait in line and can't choose the boarding time (no online purchases the day of) or risk the tickets running out. If you can't purchase online, then I recommend coming at opening and immediately buying the Lion...

"Some of the exhibits may close at 4:00." Which ones, you ask? The ones you want to see. All of them, actually. Any animal that can be put away, will be. At the entrance they will actually sell you a ticket right up until then, maybe so you can walk around for an hour taking pictures of staff cleaning the enclosures. That wasn't quite my experience exactly, thankfully only just a bit, but there are plenty of other reasons to rate down. I got there at 2:15 and headed toward the koala house hearing it closed at 3:00, only to find you can't get near them like you can in Australia. The insectarium isn't quite as nice as Butterfly World in Florida either. But these are high standards, and it actually wouldn't be so bad for a zoo with some critical changes. Like others say, lots of walking uphill due to poor design. I had to make two loops in a heart shape to cover all the ground, and getting turned around plus a bit of rain made me miss the apes, assuming they had been there earlier. Luckily most of the construction areas came at the end, or I would have missed more. Oh, I too feel bad for the African elephant, but the other cages aren't so bad, I've seen worse. Come early and take your time, that's the...