The Atagawa Tropical & Alligator Garden is a botanical garden with alligators located in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. The garden is divided into three different sections, The Aligator Garden, The Botanical Garden and The Branch Garden, where there are more aligators, red pandas, flamingos, turtles and tropical fruits trees.

I started my sightseeing from The Botanical Garden, where there are 8 greenhouses of tropical plants. Each house is specialized for tropical waterlilies, bromeliadsm wild orchids, flowering trees, ferns and so on. Because of a low temperature in December, there are any blooming flowers outside and it was very pleasant to go around the houses full of lush blooming tropical plants. My favourite one was The Wild Orchids House, because orchids are my loved flowers and I was very jealous, that I can’t grow all those orchids at my home! Also, this zone includes several cages of baby aligators, that are very cute, like every litlle animal. However, the most interesting were waterlilies, placed in the greenhouse no. 8 on the first floor. They are grown in the big pool divided into many sections and visitors watch them during listening relaxing music.

After, I came to The Alligator Garden, where are dozens of various types of alligators. It was the smallest part from all sections, but definietly the most impressive one. It was the first time, I have seen alligators for real and I was very surprised to see how inactive they are. They seem to be almost dead and look just like animal statues. However, when I was staring at the one of them for some minutes, I finally noticed, that it slowly changes a position. Although many alligators were immersed in the water, I could see them properly, because their pools were quie shallow. Also, there is a speaking parrot around there and I was really surprised, when it said to me ‘ohaio!’, which means ‘hello’ in Japanese. Unfortunately, it could’t say anything else.

In the end I visited The Branch Garden, that is located approx. 3 minutes from The Alligator Garden by bus, that is free of charge. This part of garden contains the most attractive spot of all facility. Mainly, visitors come here to see the baby of red panda, that was born in June. This is different from the most famous black-and-white big type of panda, but it’s also very cute! Except of pandas, there are beatiful pink flamingos, extremely big turles and the cage of the biggest alligators in whole garden. Also, there are many exotic fruits that look really delicious, like bananas, mangos and other, that names I don’t know.

Summary

I was very impressed by the variety of plants and animals in The Atagawa Tropical & Alligator Garden. It’s perfect place to visit if you travelling with children, who will be delighted by the animals. You should definietly come here if you will be in Southern Izu!

Weronika Golubska

Information

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* This article was written by a trainee from overseas. Please note that there might be spelling and grammar mistakes.