konnichi-what?: Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise

Today I went to Sea Paradise, an aquarium/amusement park on an artificial island! Brace yourself, because I took a lot of pictures! I am also working on editing together a video from a lot of little ones I took, but that might take a while!

To get there, I took the train to Yokohama, and then transferred to the JR Negishi line, where I went about 7 stops to shin-sugita station. There I transferred to the seaside line, and went to Hakkeijima station. Then, a quick walk over a bridge led to Sea Paradise. I managed to all of this without getting lost - hooray for planning. (I think I learned from last weekend's adventure, which wasn't so well planned!)

Again, my first task was to find something to eat. Why do I always arrive places around lunchtime? Today I had a shrimp burger - it was super tasty! Ordering food is consistently one of the hardest things I have found. Today I did ok until she asked me what I wanted to drink - that one took a few minutes to get through. I ended up with iced tea!

I found it amusing that you could buy a churro. It seems amusement parks everywhere must sell them. I really wanted to try one, but I was way too full from the shrimp burger!

My first stop was the penguin petting time at Fureai Lagoon. I touched a penguin!

Here is proof! I bought this picture for way too much money, but it was very necessary! The penguin was wearing a Halloween cape. The peace signs were non-optional. It is the pose to do around here! A penguin doesn't feel too much different from any other bird I think. But, I can cross that off the bucket list!

In this section there was a tube connecting two pools that seals could swim through - it was too cool!

There was also an artificial reef area where little kids could wade and find things. It also smelled really bad!

More penguins! Awww...

This walrus was hysterical! I have quite a bit of video of him. He kept making raspberry noises on top of the water!

This building is the Aqua Museum - a.k.a the aquarium. The back part is where the shows are held - it is open air, but with a glass roof over it.

The main attraction at the Aqua Museum is the whale sharks! They live in the pool where the shows take place. They are huge! One of them had a small school of fish that followed it around. The other had two fish stuck to it's belly.

This tank had a couple of sharks and rays, but it had a GIANT school of sardines. It was so mesmerizing, I think I watched it for about 20 minutes. I also have some cool video of this that I took from an escalator that goes through the middle of the tank in a tube!

This is one of the giant rays in the tank - it must have been about 8 feet across!

Giddy up sea turtle!

This is the stadium for the show. The show had a Hawaiian theme.

Here is the whale shark again. You can see how big it is!

You could buy snacks in the stands, like at a baseball game. They smelled pretty good!

Here is one of the girls in the show saying "Aloha" to everyone. She was the walrus trainer.

This guy fed the whale shark from a rowboat raft. At first I thought he was a volunteer, but then later he "fell" into the pool and had to be rescued by a seal.

This seal did a lot of good tricks!

The walrus does the hula!

Two girls swam in the pool with beluga whales and did a lot of tricks. This one was super impressive! At the end of this section, the whales went back to their regular pool through a tunnel, pushing the girls in front of them with their heads!