Seeing and eating what we saw at the aquarium

Generally this entire trip has been pretty freeform where we didn’t have any where specific to be at any given time. Today was a bit more structured as I bought us tickets to the Osaka aquarium for 11am a little bit more than a week ago and dinner reservations at Kani Doraku at 5:30pm, the restaurant with the giant crab on the front.

Oh I forgot to mention, we got ice cream again last night. Matcha ice cream parfait was on my list of things to check off. I got green tea, Joanna got hojicha. They were layered with red bean, corn flakes, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, and herbal jelly on the bottom. Delicious.

We got to the aquarium at 10:30 thinking they’d let us in but nope, we’re in Japan and they are never late, nor are they early. Japan starts precisely when they mean to.

There were a ton of super cute kids in matching hats on field trips. Look how orderly they are!

Joanna and I both love visiting zoos and aquariums when we visit new cities. I was fortunate enough to visit the Okinawa aquarium which felt a lot less busy than this one was, probably because it’s much harder to get to. Nonetheless, it’s still very impressive to be at an aquarium that is big enough to house 2 whale sharks.

Here’s a photo dump of my pics that I took today. Small clawed otters are my favorite animal (not counting dogs) and Joanna’s are seals which would explain the bias with the number of photos with both of these species.

There was an area where they presented more information about small clawed river otters and their habitats. One of the more interactive things was that you could smell what their anal glands excreted. Curiosity got the better of Joanna. She said the 4 yr old otter smelled like Honey our dog.

The aquarium took us about 3 hours to get through. I just finished processing all the photos off my camera. I shot about 300 photos, whittled down to 60 decent ones, down to 25 that are actually presentable. Thankfully I don’t have to pay for film.

Joanna got a ramune ice cream as a treat in the aquarium snack bar.

We did a bit more shopping at a mall around the aquarium then headed back to Dotonbori for our 5:30 dinner reservation at Kani Doraku.

We were seated right away as I had booked our dinner ahead of time. Joanna’s meal was ¥5,830 and mine was ¥6,660 (total about $90 for both of us). About 40 minutes went by after we were seated. I showed the confirmation email I got with our pre ordered meals to 2 different waiters just in case to make sure we didn’t need to order them again. They confirmed that it was on its way. Not to sound like I’m complaining but I think maybe we hit a wall with fancy multi course meals as we weren’t fully able to appreciate this one as it felt kind of similar to all the other ones we’ve had with the ryokan and minshuku on the trip.

The courses served were steamed crab with vinegar (I thought it was butter), crab sashimi (I learned I don’t like raw crab), crab with silken tofu, crab shabu shabu, crab ball with veggies, crab with cheese and potatoes (Joanna’s jam), tempura crab, shredded crab over rice that was cooked at the table with tea poured on top, crab sushi and more raw crab, ice cream with matcha prepared at the table.

Dinner was good and pretty extravagant but I think I would have been good going with something less fancy for dinner. Especially since we just came from the aquarium.

We did some more shopping for things to bring home back to friends and family and then got a drink to enjoy the rooftop area of our hotel.