Japan Day 4!

Posted by ellisaurus on July 15, 2012

Will be updating soon!

Today’s work flow on my DisplayLink Samsung monitor via USB in my MBP. Definitely excited to have more screen estate to work with. Will be exciting to use this with the VAIO.

And now for Japan Day 4! Here we are waiting to catch the train to transfer to the Sea Island train line. It was expensive! I think it ended up being 25 bucks CDN each both ways, just cause it was so far out the city.

And here’s where I dropped all my money in Japan. On bakery. The green one wasn’t that good though.

They are definitely advertising the star of the show on the Sea Island line. I was a bit disappointed when I saw that we weren’t going to the Osaka aquarium, but when I read how many invertebrates the Sea Paradise aquarium had, I was sold. And it was very very rewarding and awesome.

Looking out the tinted windows are the city side.

Sea Paradise! This is from the train line.

Am really really excited to eat my tasty buns.

Electric eel! Definitely really cool, but wish it was in a better tank instead of this tiny thing.

Knife fish.

Tropical something.

The star of the show. A juvenile whale shark, it was cool to see it, but it was no bigger than an orca, a lot smaller than I though it would be. Definitely neat to see one live though. And there were two of them! I wonder what they feed them though, considering they are filter feeders.

A polar bear.

Walrus having fun. A very freaking large mammal, it was pretty impressive to see how agile it was despite its size.

Penguins looking pretty cool.

Supposed t be showing the impact of human pollution on the environment. I think they just glued a dish washing scrubber onto these crabs.

So unreal beautiful.

Easily one of my most favorite moments in the trip, seeing this giant aquarium with freely swimming species of varying nature. Sharks, rays and fish.

Hammerhead sharks. This was actually really dark and hard to see inside.

Just look at how awesomely huge these crabs are.

These Japanese spider crabs are so huge and awesome.

Cuttlefish!

I freaking love the squid tank. I have never seen live squid. This was so beautiful.

Jellyfish are definitely one of my favorite creatures. Just so beautiful.

Super poisonous blue ringed octopus! One of the deadliest venoms out there.

Sculpin? I’m not sure why the pectoral fins are so big, I’d assume they introduce a lot of drag on its swimming.

An octopus. Definitely one of the cooler guys here in the aquarium.

Nautilus!

A cool crab doing something that I dont recognize. I assume its mimicry of some sort but I’m not sure.

Cowfish. These guys are really brilliant for expelling a poison they are not immune to, which is a real problem in a closed environment like an aquarium.

A walrus doing stupid human tricks. I really am not a fan of the domestication of these awesome creatures.

W affectionately called this the little dik diks. I think they are grass eels. I think.

I think this is a sea cucumber

The dolphin/sea mammal/human slaves show. That I didn’t realize W loves haha. I was criticizing this so much and then she was like, oh hey I actually really want to see this. BORING! Haha. It wasnt that bad, but I just loved the invertebrate sections so much.

The famed curry that I always saw in ads. Definitely not as good as I thought it would be, but still exciting to eat! I am so hungry looking at this.

W had some pork katsudon. I might have overkilled it on the trip, but this is still one of my favorite dishes. The best part was that W gave me all her leftovers so I had tons of food. Probably too much.

The dolphin tank was really cool to look at.

So freaking unreal to see a live mola mola! When these things are seen, they make the news. So to see one in person is bittersweet. Sweet for seeing one live, but sad that they are really open ocean guys and this tank is just way too small for him.

Posing with the giant mola mola. He’s a big guy!

Just look at how bored this mola mola is! This tank is ginormous, but it just doesnt compare to the open ocean at all. And they’re so rarely found in anywhere but open ocean that this has got to be super depressing. He didn’t move at all from the tank wall.

Just amazing. I usually don’t care about dolphins because they are way way overplayed at all the aquarium tourist traps, but this was just beautiful.

Petting the random sea cucumbers, starfish and poor spiny lobster locked up in a cage.

Catching the late night train home from the aquarium. Stayed till the last minute!

I think this is the senior/mother/disabled section on the train. Everybody is sleepy at this late night train home.

The super cool takoyaki ball van always outside the Ikebukuro station. Impressions on the balls later on.

Walking home.

Lots of ready made dinners in the local convenience store. Definitely exciting to me. I think its really exciting to see how well food can be made in such constraining factors like maintaining shelf life.

I totally overkilled the takoyaki balls on the trip. Knowing how awesome these were, how expensive they are in Canada and how freaking cheap these were in Japan (this was like 2 bucks for the eight of them), I ate them every single day in Japan. And they were definitely not as exciting at the end of my trip. But they were fantastic initially! This particular one wasn’t as good, it was from the van that was always parked outside the Ikibukuro station (really not safe sounding, but the van looked legit). I was expecting the van octopus balls to be the most exciting but they weren’t.

Eating some of the coconut jam I bought in Singapore with H! But now I am back home at my folk’s place. I think its called Kaya. It is still as fantastic as I remember it to be. I gotta find this locally when the jar runs out.

Just found this bag online at an advert. I do not normally click on adverts as I find that they tend to just install a bunch of spyware on my comp, but I absolutely love this bag. Its well above what I would pay for a bag (handmade in Colorado!), but I definitely want to find out if I can stain my own Fossil bag in a similar color. I think its the orangey tinge to the brown that really makes me love it.

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