Menso-re Okinawa 2

March 11th, 2007, rainy

Matt and I got up bright and early to head to the only aquarium with the biggest fish in the world in captivity- Churaumi Aquarium 美ら海水族館. Because it was a Sunday, there were not very many buses. So, it took us more than 3 hours to finally get to the aquarium.

Beside the aquarium, there is a marine park with these cute plant sculpture of sea creatures. You can see me my 'w' victory clamp.

I would like to note something interesting about Japanese when they have their pictures taken. (Or many just Asian in general?) If you ever have a chance, go through a Japanese school yearbook or just some random Japanese's photo album. you will notice that everyone likes to put up their hands and have the 'v' victory sign by either their face or each others. So, I purposefully had 'w' victory sign in this picture to manifest how annoyed I am sometimes by that. But, as you can see, the hand is not very clear against the pink clamp in the background. Oh well.

Like I said, after more than 3 hours of bus ride, we finally arrived at the aquarium. I would say the experience was worth the long ride.

This is a picture of world's largest fish, whale shark. If you enlarge this pictures, you can see that this whale shark is about 4-5 times bigger than the shark in the front. A whale shark is about 11-12 metres in length and weighs about 20 tons. I have attached here a link from wikipedia with more information on whale sharks:　http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark

Here is another picture with visitors by the tank to compare its size.

A picture of another amazing marine animal- Manta Ray, or Devil Ray. Manta rays are also very big. They are about 7 metres across their wing-like fins, and weigh about 3000 kg. It was this kind that killed Steven Erwin. I know they don't seem much compared to whale sharks, but they are still the size of 5 Tinas tall, and 60 Tinas heavy!! Can you figure out how many Tinas is one whale shark then?

After seeing some amazing fish, Matt and I discovered a traditional Okinawan style house inside the marine park. There were people teaching visitors play sanshin (三線-a string instrument made of snake skin. a traditinal Okinawan instrument).

Here is a picture of me and Matt playing the old favourite, twinkle, twinkle, little star!

We got back to your hotel about 8 o'clock at night that day, and met up with a friend, who had just arrived Okinawa that day to join our trip.