Aquarium

After the epic shopping fest of yesterday, we decided to take it easy today. We started with a nice lie in followed, as usual, with breakfast from the konbini. Then we headed off to the Kaiyukan Aquarium. Fun fact, Kaiyukan is formed from the Kanji characters 海 Sea 遊 Play and 館 Mansion.

You may have noticed 館 mansion (or big house / small castle) also appears in Aquarium, above. The other characters are 水 water and 族 family. Daniel thinks this is cute. Indra does not.

The aquarium was wonderful, though we did think some of the enclosures were on the small side for what they housed. Still, we enjoyed the sights, here are some of the highlights.

Clownfish

Diver

Giant Spider Crab

Little penguins

Mini eel things

Otter bums. They were sleeping like this, we didn't see their little faces.

Penguins

Seal

Many Seals

Whale Shark. At about four meters long, this was a little one

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For dinner we went to Daruma Kushi katsu, a "skewer specialist" which specialises in Kushikatsu. Kushi Katsu is a popular dish in Osaka of deep-fried skewered meat and vegetables. In Japanese, kushi refers to the skewers used while katsu means a deep-fried cutlet of meat.

When we arrived at the restaurant there was a decently sized queue with a check-in terminal at the front of the waiting room. We tried to press the buttons on the touch screen but nothing was happening... So we observed some locals and garnered that you needed to use the pen attached to the screen. We checked-in and patiently waited for our number to be called. Our Japanese lessons had paid off and we felt very accomplished when we knew our number had been called.

The restaurant was unlike anything we'd experienced before. There is a screen on your table (thankfully with an English option) where you choose what you want to order. We went for quite a variety of different skewers ranging from strange vegetables such as lotus root, rice cakes and premium grade beef. We also treated ourselves to a small bottle of sparking mio sake each, which we thoroughly recommend. When your order is ready a red button lights up and a train whizzes by with your food on top, the train stops when it reaches your table. When you take the food off you push the red button to send the train speeding back to the wait staff.

On the table was a small metal trough filled with delicious sauce for you to dip your crispy, golden skewers into. The number one rule of kushi katsu is absolutely NO double dipping. Once you have started to munch your skewer, that's it you can't add any more sauce.

Ordering

Food in transit

If you eat different things, we recommend you order separately. You can order as many times as you like, but there are no labels on the food when it comes.

Indra doesn't eat beef, but there's some in there somewhere.

Our favourite was the rice cake (the solitary white one above).