Sushi Deluxe

On Monday the Zygotes visited the famous Kaiyukan Aquarium in Osaka, Japan. It’s a truly impressive place, specializing in creatures of the Pacific Rim. The arrangement is very well-thought-out:  one starts at the top, looking at coastal and riverside organisms like penguins, otters, monkeys, sloths, and sea lions. The visitor gradually descends through the building, seeing creatures at different depths in their respective environments.

The star of the aquarium is the resident whale shark, Kai-Kun. Kai-Kun is an exceedingly big fish, with fins as long as a tall man, and a wide mouth which is very menacing if you’re a krill. Kai-Kun swims around and around in the giant center tank of the aquarium, escorted by rays and smaller fish. He’s the living mascot of the Kaiyukan Aquarium, and the gift shop is full of Kai-Kun merchandise and photos of various celebrities posing with a Kai-Kun model.

The Pacific white-sided dolphins are much more active, and we watched them playing with a school of small fish in their tank, herding them around with sonar blasts and occasionally snapping at one. They seem to have the fish very well-trained. One wonders if they’ve done as good a job conditioning their human “trainers.”

On the ground floor of the aquarium is a tank dedicated to bottom-dwellers, especially the giant Pacific king crab. There’s quite a crowd of them in the tank, standing around looking like Martian war machines from The War of the Worlds.

During our visit the aquarium was hosting a special exhibition about freshwater fishes of Africa, including cichlids and lungfish. It was less impressive than the main aquarium, perhaps because freshwater fish simply don’t have the sheer size that ocean creatures do.

Overall, this is possibly the best aquarium we’ve visited, and evidently a lot of people in Japan would agree. Even though it was a steaming hot Monday morning when we visited, the place was jam-packed. The fish were swimming around freely but the humans were crammed together like sardines.

Comments

[Dave*]

Subarashii!!!!!!!!!