Twin panda cubs Xiao Xiao and his sister Lei Lei made their debut on Wednesday at Tokyo's Ueno Zoological Gardens. Photo: Tokyo Zoological Park Society

 

Visitors selected by a lottery were divided into groups of six to eight people to enter the panda quarters one by one. Photo: Tokyo Zoological Park Society

 Twin panda cubs appeared in front of visitors for the first time on Wednesday at Ueno Zoological Gardens in Tokyo, Japan, with the visitors divided into small groups that entered the panda quarters one by one and stayed for one minute.

The twins, male cub Xiao Xiao and his sister Lei Lei, were born at the zoo last June and will be displayed only for two hours a day from Wednesday to Friday, so they can be seen by roughly 3,000 visitors who were selected from a competitive lottery last December.

"A total of 817 people came to see the panda cubs from 10 am to 12 am in the morning and all enjoyed themselves," a staffer from Ueno Zoological Gardens told the Global Times on Wednesday.

A netizen named Suga posted a clip on Twitter, showing one cub sitting with its back to a tree playing with bamboo while the other cub tries to climb up the tree. "I'm so lucky to have been chosen! The cubs are super super cute!" Suga said.

The video has been viewed nearly 6,000 times as of press time with numerous netizens expressing their admiration for the energetic cubs and envy toward Suga.

"I know one minute is a little bit short. But the arrangement was made to make sure everyone could have time to see the cubs," the staffer explained.

Ueno Zoological Gardens opened for the twin pandas from Wednesday to Friday after being temporarily closed on Tuesday due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Tokyo. 

Xiao Xiao and Lei Lei are the first twin pandas born at Ueno Zoological Gardens. Their mother Zhen Zhen and father Li Li came to the zoo from China in 2016.