Hey, no hurling on the shell, dude, ok? Just waxed it.

Posted by Jay
24 January 2011

After our very long night (well felt really long as we were not sleeping) we headed over to the Seaworld park itself. It turned out to be a very beautiful day to be by the ocean as we only needed sweatshirts until the wind picked up in the afternoon. As is common in all of Japan space is used to a maximum throughout the whole park. We were pretty shocked at how many animals they had in each tank, but the Japanese perspective of space is very different than ours. I am not saying the animals seemed sick or in distress, just that there were many animals in every tank.

The park was not very busy in the morning so we were able to freely observe the animals and head to a bunch of shows. It was really easy to see all the animals and even Ella could see over the railings on most of the exhibits. In the morning we saw the dolphin and orca shows and walked through the majority of the park seeing everything from penguins to turtles to fish of all kinds. Abby and Ella were on the run from one tank to the next in a race to see who could see the most.

Amazing timing by photographer Jess

This guy was huge! His tusks were like 4ft long!

We had fun figuring out what to have for lunch as none of the food signs were in English (while all the exhibits were) and ended up getting hot dogs wrapped up like a taquito, french fries, corn on the cob, juice boxes and a beer for me. We also got some dessert while Abby took a nap. Ella and Jess got ice cream and I had manju which is a Japanese steamed cake filled with sweet bean paste (azuki). Ella also used the shore binoculars to get some views of the ocean.

Awesome picture by Ella

Manju!

Once Abby woke up we went to the beluga whale show which would have been really interesting if we spoke Japanese, but alas we don't. Abby and I exited the show early due to technical difficulties (Abby wanted nothing to do with the stroller) and we headed to get a churro for after the beluga show.

The last show of the day was the sea lion performance. Both Abby and Ella were very interested in watching this show and laughed and clapped along. Thankfully we had a train to catch as Jess and I were beat. We headed back to the hotel to catch a shuttle to the train station and had a very relaxing train ride back to Tokyo (we were the only people in the reserved car).