Nasu Safari Park

photo by Yuko Honda · CC BY-SA 2.0

Only 300 white lions exist in the world, and some of them live free here.

The park uses ‘ecological display’, that is, environments as close as possible to natural ones to reduce the animals' stress: about 700 animals live in open spaces, which you can visit in your own car or by bus between feeding areas. Among the rarest animals are the white lions (a genetic variant of African lions, of which about 300 remain in the whole world) and a Bengal tiger, Stella, which arrived in 2022 from Tohoku Safari Park; in 2015 a white tiger (later named Mahalo) was also born here, a subspecies of which only 30–35 survive in Japan.

那須サファリパーク is a safari park on the Nasu plateau, open to drive through in your own car or on the park's buses, where about 50 species and 500 animals live in large areas instead of cages. It is one of the Japanese facilities that keep white lions, an extremely rare genetic variant of African lions, and it has a history of breeding white tigers, which are just as rare. Besides the safari area, it has a pedestrian walkway, a petting area with small farm animals and a restaurant.

ℹ️ Open 9:00–17:00 (9:30–16:30 in winter, last entry at 15:45). Closed on Thursdays. Tickets: adults 3,200 yen, children (age 3 to elementary school) 1,900 yen. Free car park, 350 spaces. Seasonal night safari, booking required.

🚉 那須サファリパーク · 1 min walk

Sources: tochigiji.or.jp · cocreco.kodansha.co.jp · nikkei.com

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