Visited Japan's Fox Paradise, Zao Fox Village!

Have you ever dreamed of being surrounded by lots of fluffy foxes? Apparently, Japan got the perfect place for those fox lovers. It’s called Zao Fox Village, which is a zoo where over a hundred foxes are free-roaming in an enclosed area.

It’s located in Zao City, Miyagi Prefecture. It takes about 4 hours to get there from Tokyo area by car and if you use a bullet train and taxi, it takes about 2 hours.

It’s on the top of the mountain so the access to this zoo is not very convenient. However, so many tourists visit Fox Village every day from all over the world to see cute foxes. It is interesting because every time I talk about Fox Village, none of my Japanese friends haven’t even heard of the name, however, many of my American friends do know about this place and some of them have even visited there!

When you get to Fox Village, first the staff explains to you the possibility of dangers and how to protect yourself in case foxes attack you because they are almost close to wild animals. After the instructions, the first thing that you see is many foxes kept in the cage!

Although it might look sad that these foxes are kept in the cages or chains, I heard that some of them are sick or pregnant while others are more like celebrity foxes which cannot go well with wild foxes anymore so they have to be separated from the free-roaming area. I could see some rare types of foxes that I have never seen before here too! They were all so beautiful.

Only if I could have arrived earlier, I could have held a fox to take a photo for 400 yen! The park lets visitors hold specific fox from a cage for about a minute to take photos a few times a day. If you are going, I recommend you to check the time schedule so that you can take cute photos with a fox!

Besides foxes, there are bunnies, goats, ponies and even a crow on site! You can purchase carrots to feed goats, bunnies and ponies.

After I played with goats and bunnies, finally I decided to go in the main part of “Fox Village.” Before you open the gate, there’s a huge sign warning us that this is a zoo but it’s not a common zoo so we have to be aware that humans are going inside of fox territory. It also says we cannot feed them by hand, pet them or get too close to them because there’s a chance that they might attack you.

Although Fox Village can be dangerous, at the same time, I thought it was very cool that they offer the opportunities for us to even be surrounded by these wild foxes.

We went there early April but there was still some snow left. It was very cold so most foxes were just cuddling up and sleeping. If you come here during summer time, it seems like they are more active. If I get a chance to come back to Fox Village again, I would like to visit here when it’s warmer!

Only at the designated area, you can feed foxes only for 100 yen. Since most foxes were sleeping on site, this area was a rare opportunity to see active foxes! These foxes can get really aggressive over the food.