Hokkaido · AsahikawaNo.697★★★Open in map →
Asahiyama Zoo
A city zoo on a hillside east of Asahikawa, where the enclosures are built so animals are seen doing what they do rather than standing still. It runs two seasons with a closed week between them, and the winter one is short.
- FromAsahikawa Station
- ~40 minBus, every ~30 min
- Get off atAsahiyama Zoo bus stop (Asahikawa Denki Kido bus 41/47)
- From there
- Asahiyama Zoo
Where it is
102 more notes in Hokkaido · open the map →What to look for
- Penguin Housean underwater tunnel that carries visitors beneath swimming penguins
- Polar Bear Housethe house for the zoo's polar bears, one of the exhibits that made its name
- Seal Housean enclosure for seals built around water rather than a dry pen
- Ezo Brown Bear Housea newer house given over to Hokkaido's own brown bear
- Hokkaido native animalsa group of houses for the island's owls, deer, wolves and native birds
How to actually get there
- Asahikawa Station → Asahiyama Zoo (Asahikawa Denki Kido bus 41 or 47 from Bay 6, ~40 min, 500 yen).
- Zoo bus stop → main gate ticket window (a few minutes on foot).
- Work through the animal houses across the slope, taking the climb slowly.
- Return to the same stop for the bus back to Asahikawa Station.
- Asahikawa Denki Kido bus from Asahikawa Station
- From Bay 6 at the Asahikawa Station bus terminal, take route 41 or 47 on the Asahiyama Zoo line. The ride takes about 40 minutes and costs 500 yen for an adult, with departures roughly every 30 minutes. The zoo is the end of the line, so there is no stop to watch for.
- Back to Asahikawa Station
- The same routes run back from the zoo stop. Departures thin out toward the end of the day, and the winter season finishes its afternoon early. Photograph the return timetable at the stop when you arrive, not when you leave.
About the place
Asahiyama Zoo belongs to the city of Asahikawa and stands on a hillside at its eastern edge. Rather than showing animals in bare pens, it builds enclosures that let each species do what it is built to do, and puts visitors where that becomes visible — most famously an underwater tunnel through the penguins' pool. The zoo states its own purpose as conveying life. More than twenty animal houses are spread across the slope, from seals and orangutans to brown bears and Hokkaido's own birds, and you climb as you work through them.
How to enjoy it
Doors open at 9:30, and in the summer season the last entry is 16:00 — earlier than the closing time suggests, so an afternoon arrival leaves less day than you expect. From 16 October the season closes at 16:30 instead of 17:15. In the winter season the king penguins are walked while there is snow on the ground, and that walk, not the weather, is the reason to come in the cold half of the year.
Background & history
The zoo opened in 1967 as the northernmost in Japan, run by the city of Asahikawa. For much of its early life it was an ordinary regional zoo. It later rebuilt itself around what it calls behavioural display: enclosures designed so that an animal's own abilities and habits are what a visitor actually sees, rather than the shape of an animal in a cage. That rebuilding went ahead house by house, which is why the buildings differ so much from one another.
Before you go
- Cash
- Admission was 1,000 yen for an adult and free for junior-high age and under at the time of checking, with a lower rate for Asahikawa residents. Parking at the main gate and the east gate is free. Have cash ready for the bus fare.
- Before you go
- The zoo runs two seasons and shuts between them. The schedule published for this year has the summer season from 1 May to 3 November, closure from 4 to 10 November, and the winter season opening on 11 November. It also closes from 30 December to 1 January. Winter hours are shorter than summer hours.
- Another way
- Route 78 links Asahikawa Airport with the zoo in about 35 minutes for 650 yen during the summer season, on weekends and holidays and daily from 25 July to 16 August. By car the zoo is about 20 minutes from Asahikawa-kita interchange.
- After you get off
- The bus sets down beside the main gate, a few minutes on foot from the ticket window. There are also an east gate and a west gate on other sides of the hill, so note which one you came in by.