Our adventure today was to visit one of the biggest aquariums in Japan: the Kaiyukan! in osaka.
Im not a fan of water or stingrays, not knowing these creatures would be there, i followed along with disaffection. while we were inside the aquarium, i was not intressted to be there, knowing that the pools around the building contained water and, sharks, seals and a giant baby whale which could easily make me a pancake if the glass broke. I really don't like water, not a bit. But there was some cute seals, performing tricks when we came there! We saw some trainers learning the baby seals tricks and some dolphins. Uh, yeah, then there was the giant baby whale and alot of stingrays which i hate and were so scared of! UURGH.
but, we had a nice time at the aquarium, at the end of the route, there was a giant pool where you could be petting STINGRAYS (!!!) and some kinds of sharks.. i petted both and twp of the stingrays were so happy! swimming around the pool, wanting to get petted, peeking out of the water surface, the other one did the same but it also splashed water on the visitors! When we went out of there, we had big smiles on our faces, because we petted friendly stingrays! :D
On our way to our daily adventure, we stopped by a streetperformer, called Mr. Bird! HE WAS SO AWESOME!! i was so blown away by his tricks and they were all so good and he was so entertaining and funny. Usually, im not blown away or not even impressed with people attempting "magic" on street, mostly because i see through their tricks, but this was soo cool and he was so funny when he talked to Maura during his show!
He danced and performed some kind of illusion floating of an christalball and some more! SUGOII-
I was so impressed that i started shaking after his show, WOW i must say! Had to take a photo with the cool dude, ofcourse! Just ignore my happy derp face, Japan has maked me fatter with all their delicious food.
I gave him 1000 YEN, well deserved because i was fully entertained through his whole show!
We went to Tennoji Zoo, one of the things i've been wanting to see in Osaka!
We saw all kinds of animals, all kinds of reptiles such as snakes, turtles, crocodiles. We saw also some Lions, a rhino, seals, TIGERS! <3 and some zebra's and a child giraffe (wonder where it's parent gone to?) It was exciting to be able to see Tigers for the first time.
i know alot of zoo's doesn't really "care" for their animals, and many times i've dealt with shit knowing that zoo's been killing lions or tigers nearby "me". Like one Zoo in Sweden killed two tigers just because they didn't get along... Other hand, i really thought that i wouldn't see an animal suffer, never! - like the monkey animals in the zoo did: sitting in small cages and walking back and forth or in circles, doing the exact same thing all over again... horrofying. Luckily, there was some other animals that was better taken care of, too bad not all of them wasn't.
Not going to put up any pictures of the animals that did, - not wanting to encourage anything like that. also, with these thoughts, im thinking of not going to a zoo for my 20th b-day, because i don't want to encourage any zoo's with money if they can't take care of the wild animals properly, counting ALL animals and not just a few of them. also, seeing wild animals isn't the proper way to go and see them in the Zoo, seeing wild animals is to somewhere and sit in a cage while the wild cat/bear/shark what so ever, walks freely or swims around you. :) Too bad these thoughts came after seeing a animal suffer.
We have officially reached our third destination of our adventure time in Japan: Osaka!
I never thought how smooth and fashion-looking Osaka would be, since it never intrested me. But it's great! I like the city so far, of the small part we've see, haha.
We got superlost today on our way to our hostel, like SUPER lost! on our map it said that the hostel would be 5 minutes away from Nakatsu train station, we walked in a different direction for an hour... So we waved for a cab and to my suprice, we got a lady as a driver! Perhaps it was one of those kinds of taxi's we would be seeing in Kyoto, expect it was buses.. (there was a bus called Princess line for females only in Kyoto) The cab was really nice and she drove us over for like, 5 minutes! costed us 660 Yen (around 40 SEK)
It was also one of the hottest day today, 20 C Degrees! and we spend most of it getting lost in Osaka... mehhh,,
We had some dinner at some shopping mall nearby, now we're in our small apartment which is about as big as my closet back home in Sweden.. we bought some snacks, but i ate all up before i could take a picture.
Today we did one thing that we have been longing to do: Visit the monkey park!
I had no idea that there were monkeys in Japan, before we got off the plane in Tokyo 2 weeks ago! Before we got to the park, we had lunch! I took a superspicy chinease soup containing noodles and egg and something else, it was so spicy that my throat burned when i swallowed!!
Once we got to the park, we had to climb up a mountain that was a bit higher than the Kyoto Tower, and the monkeys at the park were such a cute little creatures! :D the type of monkeys were the Japanese macaque monkeys!
I fed them with apples, but you could feed them with peanuts and some other thing, but the monkeys seemed to like apples since they kept reaching for me :D
As they were wild monkeys, the only time you could be feeding them was in a cage (picture example) -, You'd be the one who'd stand in the cage, not the monkeys (apperently this sentence lead to some misbeliefs) - but you could be out walking among them, aslong as you kept a distance.
I loved it :D such a cute little thingies, grabbing the apples from my hand with their tiny fingers :3 It was one of the best things we've done in Kyoto, unfortinutelly, we're heading to Osaka tomorrow, otherwise i'd like to visit them again!
It's super late here, and im off to bed. But first, i want to tell you that, after being in Japan for 2 weeks, we had our first sushi rolls today! I tasted Inari for the first time, too (tofu rolls, for those who doesn't know) and it was quite good! there were some other rolls that i was a bit sceptik too, but i ate most of them expect the Tuna roll... to my suprice, i ate the squid without knowing what it was o_o eeeh- We ate with our newly bought chopsticks!
Stuff i bought to myself today! 3 pair of socks: Tigersocks, Icecreamsocks & muffin socks! A phone shell, Bracelets and a necklace saying "Bam/or/Pow!" - not sure which one the cashier meant.
We also took a puripuri picture too, i wasn't even dressed since i thought we'd be only shopping ^-^' Got the cutest bag, i love it! i shall save it forever! :D