Ooarai Aquarium

It is Obon week in Japan. I think Obon is the time of year that Japanese people remember their relatives who have past away. I think the holiday is from the 13th through the 16th, but Honda has 6 days off (10 counting weekends). I don't go back to work until Tuesday. It is a good opportunity for travel because most people are working so the crowds are not that large. We took advantage of this and went on vacation early in the week.

So far, we have had a lot of fun - except for yesterday. Elin took another shot at getting her license converted. The kids and I decided to weed the yard because it was starting to look like a jungle. I weeded and the kids packed them in bags. I offered up 100 yen ($1) per bag thinking I had them because I was going to use the extremely large garbage bags that we have. I didn't specify bag size. Savannah proceeded to bring down the bags that they use to play store. They are about the size of a plastic grocery bag - or smaller. After 3 hours of weeding, she racked up 21 bags and Denny had 8. 18 of her bags fit into one big garbage bag. I suggested using a big bag several times throughout the day but she kept saying that it was OK to use her small bags.

I didn't say anything until the end of the day about the bag size. I told Elin about it and looked at Savannah and told her I knew why she was using the small bags. She just got a big smile on her face. She got me good on that one. On the flip side... it was 3 hours of cooperation, no fighting, etc. It was worth $10 an hour.

Also, Elin passed her test... on the second try. Due to a forgotten turn signal on my second try, it took me three times. She let me know about it. I was happy that she passed, but I was hoping that she wouldn't. Not because I wanted to be better than her, but every time she had to take her test after the first time, I had to take vacation. I have not used any vacation days since I have been here. I feel a little guilty taking them for some reason. I have 21.5 days until the end of the year so I was looking forward to having an excuse to burn one. We have Obon shutdown and also a shutdown at the end of the year so I will not be able to use them all. Honda pays you for the unused days so that will give us extra money at Christmas time. Oh well, at least we both converted our licenses. Hopefully, we won't have any more of that stress.

The Ooarai aquarium was the first stop that we made on our 3-day trip. If you remember from April, we tried to go here during Golden Week, but the navigation system didn't want to cooperate and we ended up at Hitachi Sea-side Park. We've got the navi under control so it was an easier trip this time. The pictures are in chronological order. They seem out of order, but you go in and out of the aquarium through the tour so you get a mix of inside and outside.

This is the third update that I made today so don't forget to check the archived entries. The archived one should be the Ichi man nin pool. I still have to add our day at the beach and Hitachi Seaside Park. We decided to go back to the Seaside Park because there were areas of the park that we did not see, but we ended up at the ride area all day again. Oh well, the kids had a blast. We bought the all you can ride passes instead of the individual tickets so we rode a lot more rides - some of the 4 and 5 times. Savannah rode her first coaster too. We are also headed back to Motegi Twin Ring Raceway tomorrow. There is a really big fireworks display that we are going to see. We will probably end up at the rides there too. Busy busy busy.


The aquarium is right on the beach. I snapped a few pictures as we were walking toward the entrance. We think it was a private beach for the aquarium because there were only a few people on it and they were fully dressed.






Here are our tickets. 1800 yen ($18) for adults, Savannah was 900 yen ($9) and Denny was only 300 yen ($3). So it was about $50 for the whole day not including lunch which ran us another 2000 yen ($20) or so.










Photo opportunity. It looks like the fish ate the kids.












And of course, we had to do it as well.












Savannah and Denny at the first exhibit. Denny was already 'fighting the power' and would not turn his head to get his picture taken. Overall, he only had one meltdown during the day. That included a 1.5 hour car ride and about 5-6 hours at the aquarium. It was a pretty good day.







Family picture in front of the Great White Shark exhibit.










Savannah came up with this idea on the spot. I didn't realize what she was doing until afterwards.









We crossed this bridge about 3 or 4 times looking for a restaurant to eat in before we went to the aquarium. We never did find one so we ate at the cafeteria inside the aquarium.







Savannah at the play area. About 20 minutes after she started playing, we noticed a sign that said (in Japanese) that elementary school kids were not allowed to play in the play area... Oops.








Denny trying on an octopus hat.













I took some more pictures as we were leaving the aquarium. Here are a few of them.

We made a wrong turn and had to pull over. I thought this area looked neat so I snapped a picture of the boats.

We stopped at Coco's restaurant for dinner. It was one of the first places we saw. Based on our troubles finding a restaurant at lunch, we decided to stop. Denny ordered pancakes. He is holding a tube of chocolate to use to draw on his pancakes. If you look closely, there is a rather large scoop of what we thought was butter. We about had a heart attack. We quickly found out that it was actually ice cream. So let's recap -2 pancakes, chocolate and ice cream. There was also peach jello, but I am not sure if it had sugar. I have my suspicions. Next time, we need to try to read the menu a little closer.

Most of what I took inside the aquarium were movies. NOTICE THE AMOUNT OF BACKGROUND NOISE. It was at this level about all day.

They had a small reptile room. I thought this guys eyes were funny so I took a movie of him. I was moving my hand around and his eyes followed it.



This is part of the dolphin show that we saw. The seats filled up quickly but we found some seats right up front. After a little while, we noticed a sign on the seats in the first 5 or 6 rows. Basically, it said that we were going to get wet. They were selling plastic blankets for 300 yen ($3), but we passed. Good thing, because we didn't get wet at all. This was the dolphin high jump.




Dolphin triple jump.

Trained seal.



Denny and Savannah at the touch pool.



This fish scoops up sand into its mouth and we think filters out food. You can see the sand dropping out below its mouth.



This may be the worst job at the aquarium. I think these are great white sharks in this tank.

The coolest jellyfish ever. Denny made us go back towards the end of the day to see them again.

This was the biggest tank and it had thousands of fish in it as well as other animals.