3/30 gretchen meets a whale shark

Make that two whale sharks. Brace yourselves for pictures, folks.

Today Ben treated me by going with me to the Osaka Kaiyukan aquarium, home to two whale sharks! I had been so excited about this that I had been dreaming about aquariums, fish, sharks, and the ocean for several nights. While some people look forward to the superbowl or the oscars as their annual TV event, I always look forward to shark week on the discovery channel. So you can imagine my excitement.

The exhibits focused on oceanic habitats in and around the pacific ring of fire, which allowed for a broad range of creatures to be featured. They had two kinds of otter (aleutian sea otters and a river otter), sea lions, penguins (Ben's favorite exhibit, we watched a handler enter the habitat and shovel snow onto their eager heads), gigantic amazonian fish, ... don't get me started, I could go on and on.



In several parts, the hallways were so crowded I felt like I was stuck in a Tokyo subway at rush hour, but with more interesting things to see.



But the highlight of the aquarium was the massive tank containing the two whale sharks (both small for their species, less than 5 m, but still...), manta rays, other sharks (Ben patiently listened to me prattle on about them all), and schools of brave little fish.





After the main exhibits, we found some creepy deep sea giant crab, a bonus jellyfish room and later a petting pool (not of the jellys) with rays and little sharks. Of course I stuck my hand in and pet the sharks.







This was by far my favorite day!