Day 13 (Part 2) Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise

The second part of our Saturday adventure was spent at an aquarium. We have a thing of going to theme parks while we're traveling. We went to a zip-line park in Jamaica on our honeymoon, a waterpark (with scary, rickety slides) and swam with tigers in the Dominican Republic, and an exotic petting zoo in Mexico where they charged you per animal you wanted to pet. It was just natural that we had to do something unique in Japan. We threw around the idea of going to Disney Tokyo, but it ended up just being too expensive. And I listened to the advice of my friends, Disney is really Disney everywhere. Instead of Disney, we decided to check out the Yokohama Sea Paradise, a seaside park featuring an aqua museum (aka aquarium) and Pleasureland, a typical amusement park with rides and coasters.

The place was pretty cool. They have 6 Beluga whales, a whale shark, a couple great whites, a couple hammerhead sharks, and something called The Umi Farm: an aquarium featuring the natural sea, and the Fureal Lagoon: an open concept aquarium. I've never seen any of those things. 

First off, go here! At the Lagoon part of the park, you can pet the animals. Also known as getting to come home and tell all your friends that you got to pet a baby Beluga. BOOM! Also, we got to pet a wittle bittle penguin. Absolutely awesome experience. They also have dolphins and otters and sea lions that you can touch, but we ran out of time after stalking a Beluga for like 2 hours.

It's always cool to see how other cultures interpret the amusement park. Like Mexico was all about the money. The Dominicans were super relaxed and all about whatever is fun which may or may not be safe, like letting you swim with tigers. And the Jamaicans were super laid back, but also really really concerned with safety. The Japanese seem to have adopted a lot from America. Everything was in Japanese, but we knew what to expect because it was laid out in a way that was familiar. The only confusing part was trying to buy tickets for just the Aqua Museum. We knew we weren't going to have enough time to get our money's worth out of a ticket for Pleasureland.

Corn dung?

We ate our lunch at the park, which consisted of corn dogs and fries. The corn dog the weirdest hot dog I've ever eaten. It tasted like a hot dog, but it was brown and looked nothing like a hot dog. Corn dung was pretty appropriate.

A fantastic example of Engrish

Aquarium big enough for a school of sardines and a couple great white sharks

Whale Shark!

Crab legs anyone?

Such a pretty leopard seal! I want one!

Oh hey, I'm a whale shark, nbd.

The ferry run by Sea Paradise. How cute that it's a dolphin?

"I'm a pir-ahn-a" *chomp*

Silly Ethan...Whale sharks eat plankton, not humans!

Bonus story! So E and I got lost. Somehow we came to the end of the Aqua Museum, but we still hadn't seen the whale shark exhibit. The only signs that were in English enforced that the attractions were one way, and to please not go backwards. But we really wanted to see the whale shark! So we found a sign for the handicap elevator, which we blindly followed to a hallway behind a door that said staff only. But we took that elevator! It was tiny, and smelled like fish, and we were about 98% sure that we were somewhere we weren't supposed to be. Obviously that meant TAKE A PICTURE! Although we did get ushered out by a grumpy looking Japanese man, we didn't get in trouble, and the whale shark exhibit was right off the elevator. Success!