Kansai 2012: Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

Sorry my Kansai blogs are so late. its almost a month late!   The next stop in Osaka was the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan ( 海遊館), a big tourist destination in the Osaka waterfront area:

I've been to another aquarium in Kyushu that was really well done so I thought this one may be worth while.  It is pretty big and they do have a lot of stuff, some in small enclosures or rather very tall enclosures that you pass several times as you wind your way down from the top of the structure to the bottom,  so you can see how things look like from the surface and then again from the middle and finally the view at the bottom....  the center piece of the place is a giant central tank that boasts hundreds or thousands of fish living together exhibiting their natural schooling behavior, circling, etc.  

I put together a video montage of a few of the things:

Video: http://youtu.be/0SqN6F1jKIU (sorry, only Youtube... if people in China really want to see it, let me know and I'll upload it to Youku too).

And here's a few pics too:

Action shot of an otter of some sort shooting through a river habitat.  They were super hard to capture on camera... took me dozens of tries. :-P

These sea otters were much easier, as they were just lounging...  this one spent most of his time licking himself in an obscene way... (I'm sure there's some other reason besides for self-gratification... but still).

His friend on shore looked like he had OCD... (see video).

These penguins looked a bit bored...  the highlight of their day seems to be the drizzle of fake snow from a snow machine on the ceiling...

Another one that was hard to get on camera were these dolphins... which look quite a bit different than our 'Flipper' type bottlenose dolphins,  all the animals in this place are from the Pacific Rim, these are Pacific white-sided dolphins.

Here's the super big tank  -

As you can see, there are a number of view ports from different sides and elevations.  The only minus I'd say is that there's nothing on the bottom except a big flat field of sand.... 

That's a giant whale shark... I guess the centerpiece of this tank. :-P

Pretty cool view from the bottom looking up!

Whats this in the blue tank?

Yikes. 

They have a separate room with just jellyfish... also fun to video.

some extremely small ones too.

I can't figure out how this one manages not to get tangled with itself...

Anyway, a cool place for an afternoon visit... but I still think I like the Umi No Tamago in Beppu more.... the tanks here feel a bit too shallow and confined (because they're tall rather than wide or deep)....