宮島水族館 (Marine Plaza Miyajima)

AUGUST 15, 2007 (Part 2)

After the experience with papa deer, we continue to the next stop, which is 宮島水族館 (Marine Plaza Miyajima). It was just about 10 minutes walk from Itsukushima Jinja. There are about 350 variety of aquatic animals include finless porpoises, sea otters, steller sea lions, sea lions and penguins.

Marine Plaza Miyajima is just one of the many aquariums you can find in Japan. But this is quite small compared to 大阪海遊館 (Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan) in Osaka. Nevertheless, it was not bad.

When it comes to aquarium, the most common thing you will see will be fish, no? But only when I was editing my pictures that I realised that I hardly take any pictures on fishes. Instead, I took pictures of weird creature, like electric eel and sea snake.

Then, there were sea creatures too. Horses which could run in the sea.

These sea horses were so small, almost like the size of those ikan bilis when you eat nasi lemak. I felt like catching, deep frying and eating them 'garing-garing'.

And there were also dragons which can fly in the water.

But no fire this time. What else inside this aquarium?

This time, it's lobsters.

And prawns.

And last but not least, crap.

Opps, I mean crab.

I've only been showing all crustacean. Lets move to a softer side. When it comes to the word soft, nothing else is better other than octopus, right?

Lembut like sotong. But these octopus looked so fierce to me. No fun one. So, I decided not to play with them. And also jellyfish.

Colourful jellyfish.

Actually, they looked different in colour because there are lights on top of the aquarium and the lights kept on changing after every few seconds.

But at last, I noticed that I did take some pictures of fish afterall. Those fish that puffs.

They call it fugu in Japanese. Cute name, eh? Actually it is dangerous to consume fugu because the insides of the fugu are very poisonous. In fact, their poison is 275 times more powerful than the deadly poison cyanide (facts taken from my English textbook).

Not enough with the yakikaki stalls outside, I saw kaki again in this aquarium.

But the kaki I need most at the moment is kaki bola! When I saw the next animal, it reminds me of that cartoon Calvin my sister used to watch, PB and J Otter.

But this time, only otter was there.

Well, actually that is a beaver, not an otter. But both of them looked similar to me.

Here's a video of the beavers during the makan time.

Those three beavers seemed to be so interested with that girl who was feeding them. But actually, all three of them were females. Hmm...

Then, there's a big turtle.

I thought I was in Jurassic Park again when I saw this. It looked like a crocodile to me. Not too sure, though.

And for the first time since I was 5 years old, I saw penguins. The last time I saw this half bird, half fish creature was at Singapore Zoo.

Me: Eh, penguin can swim one meh?
Kok Hong: Ei, you never see penguin before meh?
Me: Got la, but never see them swim ma. See, swim like fish la.
Kok Hong: Mad arh?! Fish?
Me: Eh, silap. Like duck.
Kok Hong: Jakun la you!

Here is how a swimming penguin looks like.

After my jakun session of watching a penguin for such a long time, I turned my attention to seals. Those two seals were so cute. Got spots on their body somemore.

This time, I guess I had spread the jakun disease to the seals there. The two seals there were swimming inversed. I wasn't sure, either they were trying to impress us with their swimming skills, or they were really sick.

Don't believe me? Just watch this video.

I didn't bluff you, rght? Later, it was makan time for both of them.

Am am refers to the sound you make when you feed someone food. Heard of that before? I guess most of us had gone through that before.

Even when they were am am-ing, they still can say bai bai to the kids outside.

In the end, after finishing am am-ing, they didn't say those typical words Japanese people will say after every meal - gochisousama deshita.

Instead, they takai go-ed that girl.

Takai is high; go is five. Just in case I made you blur.

We later went outside and saw this huge animal with the name sea lion. Damn big. I guess it was almost 3 or 4 times my size.

And I saw penguins again. My second encounter with penguins in just a few minutes.

All this while, when talking about penguins, what I will imagine that they will be staying in the snow area like Antartica and walk with their wings going up and down, left and right.

They were enjoying themselves during this sunny summer in the pool instead.

Another video of the penguins in the pool.

It so happen that during the time when we were there, the penguin interaction session had just started. Although the whole queue were filled with kids not more than 120cm in height, I continued with my mission to 'interact' with the penguin.

My penguin of the day named Fuku, a 5 year-old female (I think) penguin. My first touch was to rub of its back. Left hand first.

Then, right hand.

Yes, I like to raba living things. Noticing someone was taking its picture, Fuku turned and said cheese.

So, I joined Fuku and camwhored.

But this time, it looked away. Kesimpulannya, Fuku really don't have any talent in camwhoring.

By the time I finished with my molesting interaction session with Fuku, the sea lion show was going to begin. So we headed straight to the arena to get the best view for the show.

Konnichiwa to the audience.

Who want to play?

Okay, you too.

First was a ballet dance.

This must be one of the funniest part of the whole show. The two sea lions were asked to go to sleep until the alarm clock rings.

When it rang in the end, only one of them woke up.

As for the other sea lion, it needed to be woken up by its friend. Their act was so cute!

Then it was the orchestra performance. One of the seal was playing the piano, while his friend was dancing while playing the cymbal.

They even played the song Mary Had A Little Lamb.

As usual, there were also the common performances of jumping over the floats.

These seal will surely put most of you to shame because even when they were going in at the end of the show, they still went in a line while waving to the crowds.

And got song as well.

After the sea lion show, we walked around the aquarium for a while more. We thought of doing some hiking at the hills in Miyajima. Talking about the 'high' level of English in Japan, we came across this signboard.

We wanted to save the 3 minutes. So we ran a little, only to found out that the rope way service had closed by the time we reached there. So we walked again, in the middle of the forest.

By the way, it wasn't really a forest. It was getting dark already, and we decided to call it a day. Even on our way back, we saw deers again. They were starting to get too itchy when i took their picture.

I left them together enjoying their sweet time.

As for dinner, Kok Hong suggested to try the famous Hiroshima Okonomiyaki at Micchan.

If you are wondering what okonomiyaki is, saying it in simple language will be Japanese version of layered pancake cooked on a iron plate and adding noodles (soba or udon) to it.

There are also extra toppings from the variety of possible additions that ranges from shrimp to cheese.

Here's my okonomiyaki.

You haven't done Hiroshima if you haven't done okonomiyaki!