Aquarium

Cassie was on spring break this week, so Friday Jason took the day off and we went to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. It takes about an hour and a half to get there, if you take the expressway, which is a toll road. We didn't tak the expressway; we took the 58, which goes along the shoreline, and has beautiful views of the East China Sea. We stopped for lunch on the way, so it took us about three hours.

The Churaumi Aquarium is located in the Ocean Expo Park, which is this 6+ mile park along the shore that has a variety of activities and gardens. Near the aquarium, they have these cute animal topiaries. We didn't walk the entire park, but we're excited to go back and see more in the future.

Friday, we concentrated on the aquarium. First, we went to the petting pool. Jessica was a little nervous this time, and Carston mostly just wanted to play in the water. But the rest of us enjoyed feeling a few animals from the deep. Then it was on to the varius coral reef tanks. Here we got to see what it would be like in the waters off the island. Carston loved looking at the fish. Check out this huge grouper. This picture does not do it justice. It was bigger than Carston. They also had some blacktip reef sharks in this tank.

The biggest attraction at the aquarium is the Kuroshio Sea tank. It is a 1,980,290 gallon tank. The window is two stories high, and they have a switch back walk-way down the two stories so you can see the entire thing. Inside the tank they have 3 whale sharks, as well as many rays, smaller sharks, and other cool fish.

They also have a neat Shark Research Lab with interactive shark exhibits and a tank full of bullsharks and the like, as well as the jaws from a dinosaur shark. (Carston couldn't be bothered with this.)

Here's the website to the aquarium if you are insterested in checking it out: www.kaiyouhaku.com/en .

After the aquarium, we went over to check out the sea turtle tank and watch the dolphin and whale show in the park. The kids wanted to sit in the splash zone, but they didn't get too wet. They were disapointed, but it was rather a cool day, and I knew if they got wet, we'd be sorry.

On the way out, we checked out the manatee pool, but they were being shy, and then we went to the kids adventure land, where they have a playground for the kids. I forgot to take a picture of the playground, but they had a bunch of nets for the older kids (3-12) to crawl around. They have a lot of that here, but we'll blog about that later. Then we headed home. We were all exhausted, but we had a nice day together.