Elephants in Hokkaido

When I lived in Hokkaido, I liked visiting the Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo.  I recently read that four Asian elephants that were given to Sapporo by Myanmar last year made their public debut on March 12th.  This has been a very controversial acquisition because of the extreme cold in Hokkaido and elephants coming from a much warmer area.

This is the Hokkaido's first time having a herd of elephants.  The total area of the elephant house is about 5,200 square meters making it one of the largest in Japan.  The zoo opens at 9:30 am, but the elephant house takes a long time to clean every morning so they can be seen from around 11 o'clock each day. You can check out the zoo website here. 

(Hanako, Japan's oldest elephant died in 2016 at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo.)