Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan | The Whale Shark

The visit to Kaiyukan is planned as a fun day out for the kids.  After few days of touring Temples and Shrines, I am sure my children will be complaining.  So we save this itinerary for our last day as a bite 'pancing' for kids to keep them excited about the whole trip..hehe..jahat kan.

   We bought this Osaka Kaiyu Tickets, it is an economical one-day pass, which combines unlimited entry to Osaka Aquarium KAIYUKAN and unlimited train/bus rides on the date of entry in one ticket.

Our 1st encounter with The Whale Shark.  Emmett was super excited.

The Whale Shark

Our trip to Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan
There are more 15 large tanks in Kaiyukan, each recreating a specific region of the Pacific Rim, taking visitors on a virtual tour of the Pacific Ocean. The tanks include, “Japan Forest”, which recreates a sunlit, beautiful Japanese forest; the icy, snow-clad “Antarctica;” and the centerpiece of the aquarium, “Pacific Ocean,” a 9 m deep, 34 m long tank containing 5,400 tons of water, serving as the home of whale sharks, the largest fish species in the world.

There's this spiral ramp all the way from the 8th floor to the 4th floor, leaving the land of terrestrial animals to find yourself stepping into the sea all the way to the ocean floor, discovering marine life from a multitude of perspectives, from huge schools of fish to the wonderfully strange world of the deep sea.

In Kaiyukan, there are about 30,000 creatures encompassing 620 species—including otters, sea lions, penguins, dolphins, rays, jellyfish, and of coz the whale shark as our main objective.