Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

There is a huge aquarium in osaka... which we did on thursday instead of monday. Here are some pictures.

This is outside of the aquarium... its HUGE.

The aquarium! sort of a cool building, sitting right on the coast.

Another cool building right next to the aquarium. This one is a museum.

Most of the aquarium has tiled sides, and they have cool mosaics on them.

They had a large variety of mammals as well.. sort of odd for an aquarium but neat.

These little climbing crabs kept getting out of their home... and staff members in yellow coats where constantly running over to throw the newest escapees back into the enclosure.

More furry animals... this is a ringtailed coati.

What was so cool about all the furry animals was that they all had really cool fish in the water around them. The displays were these awesome land and water things. For instance, a tapir with some fish and a turtle.  The tapir habitat looked like it was from a nice zoo, and the fish habitat looked like an aquarium... it was just better done than i had seen before.

Emperor penguins being hand fed. This enclosure had lots or real snow... not something i've seen a lot of at zoos/aquariums.

Things like mooring lines, old bottles, and pieces of dock were a nice touch. Many of the displays had these pieces of human stuff which looked really cool.

The main tank has a huge school of fish. It parts for bigger fish gliding through... and swarms like this after.

A spotted eagle ray! lots of others as well, and a number of sharks. This was just a tank full of really big animals.

I tried to get some of the fish schooling...

An awesome octopus!

The awesome octopus being awesome

They had a huge manta ray. Its wingspan was easily taller than me.

Also schools of squid, with another ray.

more squid!

They had a special installation on egypt... so had a bunch of Egyptian fish and bugs.

Also an owl... which ive never seen at an aquarium. This owl is egyptian too!

There were lots of cool science facts like this... which i sadly could not read. so perhaps they were not science things at all, but i would have liked to have known either way.

To clean the big tank, these guys have a small trowel and a suction tube. They crawl back and forth, agitating the sand with the trowel, and sucking up the debris. It must take forever to get the whole thing. Hopefully you can see the faint lines in the gravel.. thats from these guys.

Sea turtles!

another special installation, this one on deep sea creatures.

also in the deep sea hallway.

So many crabs...

All these guys where just standing there.... sort of creepy. 

This was a really cool little display on the glass for the main tank.

Thats my hand... i knew this glass was think but this seems just crazy. Its so cool to me that its still so clear to look through.

Swarming fish!

At the bottom of the big tank where these cool little hiding places for little fish, with lots of little fish in them. It was neat that this was all in one tank.

They had a really cool jellyfish display.

sooo many jellyfish... but they are hard to take pictures of with no flash... so i've only posted a few. This was by far the largest jellyfish display i've seen.

The lights under the fish slowly faded in and out, and faded between colors as well.

jelly jelly jelly this one looks like an egg

On our way out we saw this. One Piece is really big here... it's  just about everywhere you look.  This is a whole store devoted to it.

Raw Meat

We had two meals over the last few days that i dont think would be available in the US. The first because it involves oil frying at your table...

Thats hot oil in the center, surrounded by a super hot metal edge. You take you raw meat, batter it, roll it in crumbs, and then fry it at your table.

This place gives you a little grill, and a bowl full of raw meat.

The bowl on the left used to be a bit more full. At this point we had eaten everything but the stomach. Every combination at this place comes with just a bunch of stomach, which you cannot grill enough to be good. If you dont tend your grill correctly (which we did not till a helpful guy mimed the right way to) you get a 1.5 foot flame bucket in the middle of your table... which lets all the locals know you are an idiot turist.

Typhoon!

The Typhoon is coming! This should be interesting :)

Joint Typhoon Warning Center

Trains and Scenery

Im planning a train trip around this side of japan for my last few days. I wanted to see some of the interior of japan, as well as just sort of see the scenery. This is the planned trip, starting from Kyoto, and ending in Osaka for my flight home on tuesday. Should be fun! The highlights are...

• Himeji Castle, which is one of the oldest and best castles in japan. It is one of the few that hasn't been destroyed by fire, war, or earthquake, so it should be interesting.
• Hiroshima, there is a large memorial for the A-bomb stuff.
• The train ride to Matsumoto, much of which is on a "wide viewing" train. I wanted to see some of the mountains, and the interior of the country.
• Tokyo... which should be awesome. Spending a few nights there, to see the morning fish market, as well as the current imperial palace.
• The last night will be in osaka again. They have one of the largest aquariums in the world (they have a whale shark usually...), then on too the airport.

Here is the map... ill leave tomorrow or the next day.


View Larger Map

Some Other Stuff

Just some more interesting pictures...

I liked the color coordinated fixed gear with a bell. I think they have brake laws here, so you need both front and rear.

Ive seen a number of people out on these bikes. They have super small wheels so look really funny. Here is a fixed and one with regular road drops, both with half sized wheels. they look so goofy!

i had something else at this place, but saw the spam cans on my way out.

cool overpasses. its a long indoor shopping mall all along underneath them.

There was a huge pokemon store in osaka, filled with moms and little kids. 

In the back of the pokemon store, there was a large crowd of kids. They all had DS's, and where battling pokemon with each other.

The hello kitty shop has really creepy mannequins

streets like these go on for ever. you can take any side street and its the same. This was in osaka in the evening. All the places are little bars and restaurants, with a few other shops. Later at night it becomes quite crowded, even with the rain. Oh and umbrellas are cool here. no one uses a rain jacket. also you want to have a simple umbrella, not a collapsable one. at the entrance to most/all store/bar/etc there is an umbrella stand, where you leave your umbrella while your inside, and pick it up on the way out.

Cemeteries

I ended up a a number of cemeteries yesterday and the day before... so here are some pics!

The first one, Adashino Nenbutsuji, is an old buddhist temple. To get to it you have to ride up this little mountain road. 

The temple is full of little stone markers, many of buddhist deities.  High priest Kukai is supposed to have buried a thousand of them on top of the cemetery. 

They add little aprons to some of the statues... im not sure why.

many of the grave stones have thin wooden sheets in front of them. Most of them have places for flowers and incense burning.

People leave stuff on the graves. The blue things are soda cans. Ive also seen sake and other beverages.

More of the little stone things. 

There was one main field like this one, and then many smaller fields of stone statues.

This was in the center of the place. You take an incense stick, and place it under that little hut.

The next pictures are from a newer cemetery. Its called Toribeno. In The Tale of Genji, its where her mother is supposed to have been buried.

The place is massive. I walked for ten minutes or so then checked gps on my phone, and i was only about a third of the way through. It has many different tiers, and runs up the side of a mountain.

Its been a cemetery since the Heian period (9th to 12 ccentury). This was just a cool grave. The stone tablet on the right is a common thing on many of the graves.

Just some more tombstones.

On the way up to the next place, i saw these odd clay statue things.

These next photos are at a war memorial. It seemed like a sort of combined place for all modern wars that japan has fought. These where paper cranes someone had hung near one of the markers.

I made a turtle friend!

View of kyoto from midway up the war memorial.

Japanese graffiti looks super cool

The war memorial had a cemetery behind it, that just sort of sprawled through the woods. Lots of the stone post markers from before, and a few larger ones like this.