Our trip to the aquarium

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We came in two different groups - the majority that flew on the 9th, and a small group that came a day later. For those of us who had a day off, we went as a complete group to the Kaiyukan Aquarium in the Tempozan (Big Wheel) Plaza.

(As an aside, about the only thing we all ever do en masse is perform, so it was a rarity that we *all* went.)

The aquarium is one of the largest in the world. It's built around the theme of "Ring of Life," which is a play on the "Ring of Fire" (not Johnny Cash), the many-thousand-mile-long path of volcanicically active mountains that rings the Pacific Ocean.

(As another aside, it's this feature that the famous Ring of Fire handbell ensemble was named after.)

The aquarium is organized by regions, such as "Monterey Bay," "Deep Japan Sea," "Great Barrier Reef," etc. The centerpiece is a huge four-story tank encased in plexiglass, about which the walking path circles, starting at the top and descending to the bottom. As Michele says, at each depth there are different critters. You can see all of them at once from any level, but the fish tend to congregate at a particular volume, so every turn yields a fresh vista.

Here are a few pictures from our excursion. Unfortunately, it was raining, so we weren't al that interested in the giant wheel. Enjoy!

---Jason

This is the star of the aquarium, the great whale shark. We could have paid $10 to have our picture taken with him..

Yes, otters are indeed exceptionally cute.

Here's one of the *real* whale sharks (you can tell because he isn't wearing the santa hat). The aquarium has two of them. This is the "lonely" one - the other guy has a huge entourage of hangers-on, but he only had one little shark-sucker fish.

This is a happy looking shark, although I can't remember exactly which kind he is.

My beautiful wife and fellow Sonosian, Diane, and Michele (various middle names) Sharik.

These are the (in)famous Japanese deep sea crabs. Their "wingspan" is many, many feet. Trippy!

Yes! I finally got a good shot of one of the two hammerhead sharks cruising around. These guys just look *scary* to me.

To the left is a bizarre fish that looks silver. The color is actually a reflection - amazing!

I loved the colors of these jellyfish, with their rich orange cap against the deep blue tank and their almost luminescent underbelly and long, long streamers.


To the right is santa feeding the fishies. He also tried to help a sick sun fish, but it kept throwing up its dinner. We assumed it wasn't long for this world...


This is a menagerie of teeny-weeny jellyfish. Very cute.

Finally, while not at the aquarium, this is the hotel where we're staying in Osaka - "The Hotel New Archaic." (Yes, something lost in the translation.) It's not the New Otani (our previous abode in Osaka in years past), but still quite nice.

And that's it!

---Jason