Aquarium

Amazing day.  So yesterday, I went to the aquarium in Osaka with my lovely dormmates.

Me, Sophie and Maritana posing in front of the fountains.  Unfortunately the lovely Reni was holding the camera so she wasn't in the shot.

First view of the aquarium :)

This is what I had for lunch.  Good ramen with bamboo, corn, bean sprouts and scallions, also a bowl of rice, a salad that reminded me a lot of coleslaw, and some kind of chicken dumpling thing.  Yum yum.  For dessert, we split a parfait four ways because we were already very full.

I would have liked to have had a picture, but honestly it was gone within 30 seconds.

The aquarium itself was so amazing.  Apparently it's one of the biggest in the world, and they had everything, even capibara and a kind of petting zoo type thing where you could touch manta rays and small sharks.  Unfortunately the battery died on my camera about 20 minutes into the actual aquarium.  I got a bunch of good shots with my phone camera, but until I figure out a way to easily transfer those photos to my computer I might just steal some photos from the girls. 

This is us with the manta rays.  They were actually hamming it up a lot and seemed to enjoy the attention.  There was a really big black one that was constantly swimming around the perimeter and lifting himself up out of the water so people could more easily touch him.

The otters were so cute! They were also a bunch of big hams, whenever they saw someone with a camera walk by the tank they swam down and just kind of chilled there so we could pay attention to them.

This was actually my favorite area, there were a lot of really vividly colored tropical fish and a coral reef area.  When I stood this close to the glass it was easy to feel like I was swimming with them.

This is one of the pictures I got with my camera phone.  The jellyfish were massive and it's harder to see in this shot but they looked a lot like mushrooms with seaweed stems.

This is another camera phone shot of Osaka's ferris wheel at night.  This was right outside the aquarium and it looked so beautiful.  I really wanted to ride it, supposedly you can see all the way to Kobe from the top, but it was late and the others weren't up for it just then.  I suppose there's always next time though.

I was really hoping to bring back a souvenir from the aquarium, but nothing in the gift shop really stood out to me.  I did get something, though.  My umbrella that I brought from home fell apart almost as soon as I took it out of my suitcase, so I bought a new one.  Originally I bought this cheap transparent one from Japanese Claire's.  I thought it was so cute with its white ruffles around the edges, but the first time I opened it up after leaving the store there was already a rip in it.  Fortunately they allowed me to get a refund, which I used to go next door to an actual umbrella shop and buy a better one.  It was a bit more expensive but I'd rather pay for quality that will last than keep buying cheap umbrellas that fall apart.  It's plain pink and made of kind of a thick material, but when it gets wet patterns of tiny flowers appear on it.  They demonstrated it on a model for me at the store.  It's so cute!  I also took purikura with the girls.  Maybe later I'll upload a picture of it.

Altogether, amazing day.  Thank you ladies!