The Atagawa Tropical & Alligator Garden (熱川バナナワニ園, Atagawa Banana Wani En?) is a botanical garden with alligators located in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park at 971-9 Naramoto, Higashiizu-cho, Kamo, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It is open daily. An admission fee is charged.
The garden opened in 1958. According to Kawata, in 2004 it contained 29 reptile species (349 specimens) in its zoo. The garden also contains a tropical botanical garden and fruit garden heated by hot spring water, with a lotus greenhouse (giant lotus, etc.), main greenhouse (hibiscus, orchid, etc.) and annex greenhouse (banana, papaya, pineapple, etc.). Other plants include bougainvillea.
Famous quotes containing the words tropical, alligator and/or garden:
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“‘Tis no great valor to perish sword in hand, and bravado on lip; cased all in panoply complete. For even the alligator dies in his mail, and the swordfish never surrenders. To expire, mild-eyed, in one’s bed, transcends the death of Epaminondas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The garden flew round with the angel,
The angel flew round with the clouds,
And the clouds flew round and the clouds few round
And the clouds flew round with the clouds.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)