15 Nov 2023 - Osaka Day 6: Osaka Aquarium KAIYUKAN

We visited Kaiyukan Aquarium at Osaka Bay about 15 years ago.  You can read about that trip here.  Jerlene was one year old at that time and Javier was still in Mommy's stomach.  :-)

We were back here upon request from Javier, after we decided to give it a miss for a second day at USJ.

Instead of queueing to purchase the admission tickets, we scanned the QR code on a sign board and purchased it online, thus skipping the long queue at the ticket office.

There were many school children having their excursion here.  Though this is an aquarium, the first few exhibits were not fishes.

At Kaiyukan there are over 15 large tanks, each recreating a specific region of the Pacific Rim, taking visitors on a virtual tour of the Pacific Ocean.

The tanks include, “Japan Forest,” which recreates a sunlit, beautiful Japanese forest; the icy, snow-clad “Antarctica;” and the centerpiece of the aquarium, “Pacific Ocean,” a 9 m deep, 34 m long tank containing 5,400 tons of water, serving as the home of whale sharks, the largest fish species in the world.

Look at the size of these stingrays!

We took the spiral ramp all the way from the 8th floor to the 4th floor, finding ourselves stepping into the sea all the way to the ocean floor, discovering marine life from a multitude of perspectives, from huge schools of fish to the wonderfully strange world of the deep sea.

A visit to an aquarium will not be complete without seeing the mesmerizing Jellyfish!

Kaiyukan Aquarium consists of 30,000 creatures encompassing 620 species—including otters, sea lions, penguins, dolphins, whale sharks, rays, and jellyfish.  We spent close to 3 hours in the aquarium.

The following video captures some of the highlights.

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