Japan 2014

Day 3 (December 23rd, 2014)

In the morn­ing, we vis­it­ed a large shop­ping mall. It was very busy. Many shops and depart­ment stores were dec­o­rat­ed for Christ­mas, you could also find gift stalls like those at the Christ­mas mar­kets at home. Some shops were loud and bright, goods were adver­tised via loud­speak­er. But despite the many peo­ple, there was a cer­tain order, nobody pushed, every­body lined up in a queue in front of the cash desk with­out grumbling.

We had been invit­ed for lunch by the for­mer super­vi­sor of our daugh­ter and her fam­i­ly. So we could vis­it an orig­i­nal Japan­ese restau­rant. The menus there were only in Japan­ese, there were no pic­tures and we would have had a hard time with order­ing. But the super­vi­sor was kind enough to order for all of us and so we had tem­pu­ra and dif­fer­ent sushi. We had a very nice con­ver­sa­tion and learned a lot about the Japan­ese cul­ture. The food was very tasty.

In the after­noon, we vis­it­ed the aquar­i­um of Osa­ka, the KAIYUKAN, which is locat­ed in the har­bour area and very worth see­ing. With a total water vol­ume of 11.000 tons, it is one of the largest urban indoor aquar­i­ums in the world. In the cen­tre of the build­ing there is a gigan­tic 9-metre-high tank, which alone con­tains 5,400 tons of water. You slow­ly descend in a cir­cle around this basin and can watch the fish (includ­ing a whale shark, rays, ham­mer­head sharks) from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Very impressive.

After leav­ing the aquar­i­um, we enjoyed a beau­ti­ful sun­set over the sea in front of the aquarium:

We went back to the hotel by sub­way. This was also new and unfa­mil­iar for us: You have to look at a board to see which route you want to take. There you can find the costs for the trip. After that, you pay suit­ably and get a tick­et that you have to val­i­date at the begin­ning of the trip. At the end, when leav­ing the sub­way sta­tion, you have to put it again into a vend­ing machine. If you paid the cor­rect price, you can leave the sta­tion through the bar­ri­er. If not, a sig­nal sounds and you have to pay the dif­fer­ence. But thanks to the help of our already expe­ri­enced daugh­ter, we paid cor­rect­ly and could leave the sta­tion with­out any problems.