There’s more to Osaka than just the bright neon running man of Dotombori. As part of our two-day Osaka pass, we visited the bay area just before sunset until dinner time… and it was pretty fun!
Our main purpose for the visit was to check out Kaiyukan (海遊館), the Osaka aquarium that famously housed two whale sharks. If you love aquariums, this would be one you should visit as I thoroughly enjoyed the walk around the aquarium.
The Osaka Aquarium is very well organised with different sections showing different aquatic life. Let me take you for a trip…
We saw some of these cuties, including the capybara (I’ve never seen a real one in my life, so that was quite cool)!
We then were greeted by some pretty majestic – and photogenic! – seals… Like, they really were such posers!
But the penguins didn’t want to lose either. They put up a great catwalk (or would you call it penguin-walk?) for me…
My favourite picture of the day would have to be this one. I shall call him Happy Feet:
We also saw some dolphins. I didn’t take too many photos of them, as we were busy playing with them!
And there were plenty of pretty fishies all around…
Plus some really weird looking stuff, like Mr. Octopus here… and his friend, the green-eyed monster.
Okay, so obviously I’m not an aquatic animal buff and I don’t know the names of most of these species of sea animals… But at least when we saw the whale sharks, I could identify them straight away!
We spent quite some time admiring the whale sharks inside the nine meters deep tank.
And then we moved on to the beautifully graceful jelly fish. I didn’t know there were so many types of jelly fish… and they all looked magnificent!
Pretty electrifying, hey!
We found these really cute and fluffy sea trees (yep, I’m so good at naming things)… Adorbs!
And after spending quite some time immersing ourselves into the sea life, we reached the end: the petting area, with some other pretty seals and penguins to see! (They must know that these two are the most camera-friendly ones.)
These penguins were so sick of paparazzi, they decided to look the other way permanently. How very posh.
Here’s a “how to” sign if you would like to pat some of the aquatic animals…
Before we left, we found Nemo. I guess this was the whole point of our trip to the aquarium, right?!
It was night time when we left Kaiyukan and the place lit up nicely for us…
We then visited the Tempozan Harbor Village shopping area to find some food. We walked around Naniwa Kuishinbo Yokocho, a food theme park that brings you back to the Edo era. The food, however, are not from the past Edo era, obviously.
There was a ninja house that you could pay to enter. We didn’t give it a try, but I was impressed with the Kakashi statue at the front of it. (PS: Naruto is an anime about ninja, Kakashi is Naruto’s sensei. So, ninja attraction + Kakashi = legit ninja stuff.)
My hubby and I decided to eat some curry and katsu. Nom nom nom. And green tea soft serve to top it off.
After walking around the area, we decided to take the Tempozan ferris wheel, because it was free when you have the two-day Osaka Pass. It was rather windy that night, and apart from the view of the bridge and Kaiyukan, I don’t think it would be worth the ride if you were to pay.
The highlight for tourists visiting the Osaka bay area would be the Osaka Aquarium. Get cheaper tickets to Kaiyukan from your hotel lobby or one of the discounted ticket shops around Osaka.