Osaka aquarium or Kaiyukan is one of the largest public aquarium in the world. “Kaiyukan” in Japanese means “playing in the sea pavilion. As one of Osaka tourist spots, Kaiyukan aquarium attracts visitors from many countries all year long. Kaiyukan is located at Osaka bay, close to the port but a bit outskirt of city center. The internet says it takes 5 minutes walk from Osakako station but it took me 10-15 minutes to reach Kaiyukan from the station. I got out from the wrong exit gate, sadly I have no sense of direction until now.
I went to Kaiyukan around 5 pm on early spring. There was not any queue at the ticket counter, I could pay the entrance ticket 2,300 Yen without queuing. It was almost sunset by the time I entered the aquarium. I could see the port from large glass window before stepping inside the marine life tank. This time I skipped the sunset and went straight to the aquarium instead. The first fish I saw was shark, many of them swimming inside ocean blue water tank in tunnel shaped.
The main attraction in Kaiyukan is a whale shark in a giant water tank of 9 meters deep and holds 5,400 cubic meter of water. Although this water tank was the largest one I ever seen in my entire life (not that I’ve been around the world that much), I was a little bit disappointed with the quality of the light inside and surrounding the water tank. It was very dark, made it impossible to take good picture of the fishes inside the tank. I tried to increase exposure composition but still the picture quality of whale shark was very bad. I decided not to include it in this post.
The best time to visit this aquarium is afternoon time or while the feeding time.
There are 16 exhibits (27 tanks) in Kaiyukan displaying habitats from Ring of fire of the Pacific Ocean. The exhibits are divided based on the area such as Japan Forrest, Great Barrier Reef, Tasmanian sea, the Pacific Ocean, deep sea, jelly fish section and many others. It looks like whale shark, dolphin, sea lion, penguin and manta rays are the most popular ones.
This manta ray section is in open air and can be touched. But I had no courage to lay a finger on any of this manta ray. They look pretty scary to me.
Will you touch this manta ray if you have any chance?
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