We had a leisurely start to the day today after yesterday’s epic theme park adventure. We didn’t get to the aquarium until 10.30, which is quite late to hit an attraction for us.

Above is the big Ferris Wheel by the aquarium (we didn’t go on it).

The aquarium:

Osaka aquarium is one of the largest public aquariums in the world. You start at the top and kind of work your way down in a spiral. As the tanks are quite deep, you can see each tank in several “slices” – from the top, in the middle, and at the bottom.

We saw penguins, seals, sea lions, otters, randomly – coati and agouti, lots of fish, octopi and – the big (huge) highlight – whalesharks. Apparently the aquarium houses approx. 30,000 fish and 620 different kinds of marine life. And did I mention the two huge whalesharks?

Their “touch” pool is sharks and stingrays (‘rough’ and ‘slimy’, respectively).

We had to stop and have a ‘traditional’ whaleshark icecream (ramune – a kind of Japanese soda flavour – and vanilla, with sprinkles meant to represent the whaleshark pattern):

Maeve couldn’t resist purchasing her own whaleshark:

When we finished at the aquarium, after about 3 hours, we went across the road to a place called Kuma Kafe. I’d come across them in my research and heard they had a gluten-free menu. Indeed they did, and Maeve chose chocolate pancakes:

We all had lovely food there and the people were delightful. Decided then to head home for a break and possibly go out for dinner after a rest.

Morgan tried a hot coffee drink from a vending machine on the way back to the hotel:

Apparently, it was a mistake.

We were all a bit knackered and the kids were quite excited to just “blob” when we got back to the hotel at 4, so I got going on the Universal Studios blog, and Morgan went out to find a coin laundry to do our clothes.

He came home a couple of hours later having washed and dried all our clothes for the price our hotel would have charged us for laundering 2 pairs of undies!

In the end, the boys went out to find something interesting to eat while Maeve and I stayed at the hotel. The latter having a ‘natural spring’ bath while watching a movie on her tablet. (The hotel is over a natural hot spring so they have it plumbed to each room – you can choose to have ‘normal’ or hot spring hot water).

A pretty relaxed day in all. I don’t think we even hit 10,000 steps!

Tomorrow we’ve got a few things planned but we may get some rain.