Some Zen Gardens

Many of the temples in Kyoto had zen gardens with sculpted sand and trimmed shrubbery...

These are from Ginkakuji temple, which has the 'silver pavilion'. Sort of like the golden pavilion,  except this one never got finished to the silver pavilion isn't silver.

There was lots of sculpted sand. They managed to get such straight lines and sharp edges which was really neat.

Lots of nice water and rocks

A wishing well!

A little shrine off to the side a bit... im not sure whats its for.

They use a lot of these bamboo railings, which are just tied together with string but super stable.

The silver pavilion is off the le left, and kyoto is in the background.

I was impressed with how clean the forest was inside of the temple walls. Inside its nicely kept moss and no dead branches or anything. Seems like a lot of work.

The silver pavilion!

They had a section of the roof, so you could see how it was made.  Its made of japanese cypress. Each shingle is about 30cm long, with the last 3cm showing. A bamboo nail is used to attach them all.

This is at the "Northern Gion" shrine. These litle fountains are all over. You collect some water in the wooden spoon, and poor it over your hands into the fountain.

These are little strips of paper with prayers/wished written on them tied to the trees next to the fountain.

The "Northern Gion" shrine focuses on Miyamoto Musashi, japans greatest sword master. He fought and defeated the Yoshioka school nearby around an ancient pine tree, the famous "Sagarimatsu" pine. This is a bit of the ancient pine. All this stuff went down in about 1294.

The man himself

Next to the sword-master shrine area is a small house with some beautiful gardens. A famous poet lived here for a bit.  Now its the Shinsendo Temple

More sand gardens in the poets house

This is a deer frightener. Apparently designed by the poet himself, it was to scare wild pigs and dear away from his  garden. It fills with water, then dumps and knocks on a rock making a cool noise.

Koi in a nice little pond

some Koi ponds have these little huts in them, to add some shade for the fish. 

A cool bridge thats just a stone

This is at the entrance to the poets house. I was surprised by how thing these roofs are.

This temple had a really neat entrance/exit

A shrine by the side of the road...

More prayer sticks you can use. I think they must burn them at regular intervals.

These pictures are from the Mansyuin temple. This place was sort of like a big house of open hallways with gardens between.

These are what the walkways look like. You take your shoes off to walk around.

They do a lot of tree shaping. Some of these hold branches up, and some pull them down,.

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.