Osaka aquarium

We went back into Osaka last weekend to visit the aquarium there, reputed to be the best in Japan. We found it underneath the giant Ferris Wheel, along with a lot of other people headed into see the sea life. The building itself is somewhat interesting; it's sort of shaped like a big butterfly. You enter through a little building on the side, then go up an escalator to the first exhibit. To get through the aquarium, you wind your way down through the seven floors. This means you get views of the main central tank from several different levels, and a few other tanks offer above-water views on one floor and below-water shots a few floors down.
We got there in time to see feedings of the penguins, sea otters and dolphins. The sea otters were probably the best, because they would grab their food and then dive into the water, near the glass, to eat it. It was entertaining. Some of the animals were a bit unusual for an aquarium; there were iguanas and caimans, which make some sense, but the spider monkeys seemed a bit out of place - although it was fun to see them. There were a couple of tanks with different kinds of sea turtles, and another with some tortoises, so I liked those. There was a couple of octopuses, which was neat. Towards the end were some Japanese Spider Crabs, which are crabs with really long, thin legs. They look kind of creepy, and Chelsey said that if she had nightmares about any of the creatures we saw it would be them.
The star attractions of the aquarium, however, are the whale sharks in the central tank. Whale sharks are the largest extant fish species in the world ... and they sure are big. It was amazing just watching them swim around. From the lower levels, you didn't even need to be looking to know that one swam by; it would block out the light coming from higher up in the tank. Interestingly one of the sharks, but not the other, had a school of fish swimming around its head, somewhat permanently. It was almost like when the tops of mountains are shrouded in clouds; the shark's head was obscured by all these fish. Whale sharks don't generally eat fish, but even so I'm not sure I'd hang out by a shark's mouth were I a fish. There was also a giant manta ray in the tank next door, so we got to see some impressively large ocean creatures.
-Jason
There are more pictures on the picasa site.