Ocean, You Meet Whale Shark

Yesterday I took a day trip to Osaka with a few friends. We woke up to a couple inches of snow but we thought nothing of it as we got on the bus to go downtown. At the train station though, it was a bit chaotic, people were running out of the station, clearly in a great hurry. That was our first clue that the rail system was upset by the snow. Sure enough, the special rapid train wasn't running, so we had to take a local train (think "takes twice as long to get anywhere because it stops at every little station") for about a half hour until we could switch to a special rapid. Those were trains #1 and #2 of the day. Finally in Osaka about an hour and a half later, we caught the loop line, but managed to get on the one train that wasn't exactly on the loop line. Unfortunately we didn't notice that until the end of the line. We had to hop off, and wait for a train returning. Trains #3 and #4. Last we caught what was called a subway, but it wasn't underground, so it was Train #5. Finally, we had made it to the aquarium!

The aquarium was great and had a theme: the Pacific Ring of Fire. It had lots of creatures other than fish: otters, seals, octopus, jelly fish, penguins and of course dolphins. For reasons known only to the museum staff, the otter habitat had a huge skeleton of what might have been a mammoth.

Here is curiously Japanese service - if you want a picture of yourself next to a plastic whale shark, you get in line. When it's your turn, you hand your camera over to the museum staff who shoot your photo for you. It's a really cool service and they've got a very efficient system for it. I've seen it at lots of places and think it's something we should adopt in the US.Of the aquarium creatures, I was most impressed by the octopus. They had clay pots (traditional octopus traps) in the tank, and the octopus (octopii?) were moving in and out of them. I love to watch their weirdly graceful movements.

Here we have some squid or cuttlefish (couldn't find a sign to tell me which) and kelp.
Giant spider crabs! Sardines swimming endlessly in circles.

And beautiful orange jelly fish

After the aquarium the afternoon was still young, so we rode the ferris wheel next to the aquarium. We had a birds eye view of a cruise ship and the aquarium and the urban sprawl that is Osaka.

Those of you interested in more aquarium and ferris wheel photos can check out the webalbum. Some of the photos are out of focus - couldn't get the seals, otters, and penguins to stand still for a photo!