Day 65: The Greatest Aquarium In The World

This is it, guys. This is one of the main reasons we came to Okinawa. 

You may have seen super calming videos somewhere online of the Churaumi Aquarium and ever since I saw that first video, I had to go at some point at my life. Well that point in my life came and it was everything I wanted it to be. Well, it was kind of crowded, but you can't win them all.

We pre-purchased our tickets for about ¥1,600 from the hotel and drove up the coast to this magical aquatic wonderland.

I'm more than ready to see me some fish. 

Fitting in with the locals.

Eels typically freak me out (just like snakes of any kind) but these guys are just so damn cute. Look at them popping their heads out to say hello.

Fugu just chilling in the tank.

Whale shark! It's hard to tell the scale of these creatures but all signs point to "friggin' massive."

This tank is huge and while there are a tonne of people in the room, it's really quite quiet and somewhat relaxing... kind of like having an aquarium in your house. If you invited over 250 people. Wait, that sounds awful. Nonetheless, it was pretty great and you can take a break in the cinema-like seating and just watch these sea creatures swim around.

A rare moment where *almost* no one got into my shot. Except for that guy on the right. Thanks, guy.

There were a few manta rays, which always seemed like were having a good time. They even swam vertically upwards and jumped out of the water seemingly just for shits and giggles. Manta rays are great.

Hello up there!

We were walking around after seeing the main part of the aquarium and discovered a Halloween dolphin show where they dolphins were dancing to Thriller. Sure, why not?

Planning on making this a new addition to our future garden.

After the aquarium we had one night in the main city of Okinawa before heading back to Tokyo. We stayed at probably the most cool hotel in Okinawa – Estinate Hotel – in probably the smallest hotel room we've ever stayed in. No matter, it was one night only and it was a cool hotel and close to a bunch of restaurants. 

After a bit of wandering, and finding out that the restaurant we'd been planning on going to shuts at 6pm (who does that?!) we found this little soba restaurant called Sanchome. It was cute, cheap and was exactly what we wanted.

The steam kept fogging up my screen! The pork here was pig's trotters which is fairly typical to the area.

Some thing I noticed about people in Okinawa which I never mentioned here was that so many people wore Hawaiian shirts. At first I thought it was people who worked at tourist destinations but I actually think it's a thing. And I get it, it's hot and Hawaiian shirts keep you cool (in more ways than one?). After nearly two weeks on the islands, I was even considering buying a Hawaiian shirt for myself.

And that was Okinawa. Tokyo, we're coming for you!