Kyoto Station and Kyoto Aquarium

I’m back in America now, so I’ll be catching up on everything I haven’t been able to post. I found these pictures from about 2 months ago, actually.

A few friends and I took a trip to Kyoto. We were trying to go back go Mt. Hiei (next post), but due to the rain we ended up wandering around Kyoto Station and going to the Kyoto Aquarium.

I really like trains; they are a pretty convenient and scenic way to travel.

So first we played around Kyoto station. It is gigantic! There were actually people in Kyoto that protested building something so big, since it could distract from Kyoto’s temples.

The station is actually open air, but the roof is so big it still prevents the rain from getting in.

And it seems they are thinking with portals.

This is an advertisement for the new Doraemon movie. Doraemon is a children’s manga series and cartoon series that has been running since the late 60’s. It’s about a robotic cat from the future (the blue character) that helps children with his many gadgets.

We found this at a restaurant tucked away in the attic of the station.

These are my friends Rachael, Matt and Aaron (left to right). Matt and Aaron are both over six feet tall, so as a group we really stuck out on trains!

Here’s a view of Kyoto Tower, which stands right next to the station.

The rain cleared up after wandering the station for a while. It turned into a pretty nice day by the time we were headed home, actually.

The station had a stand advertising Kyoto Aquarium, which had opened only a few days before we arrived. They had a tank of jellyfish, so we said why not and went to the aquarium. Kyoto Aquarium is actually only a few blocks from the station, and I liked the pedestrian overpass we used to get there (there’s a lot of these in Japan, actually):

So without further ado, here are some pictures from the aquarium. (click the thumbnails to view them)

These lizards were actually underwater!

Their fishtanks were pretty amazing. They used a lot of curved glass, like for the big viewing window here. A lot of the tanks curved up over the top of the hallways as well.

Watching the diver working in the tank was pretty cool. He had to bat away a turtle that kept swimming into him, which was funny. You have to respect a guy that dives into a tank full of sharks and stingrays to keep the tank running and the fish healthy.

The Aquarium also exhibited the lab where they raise the jellyfish and sea stars, which I thought was cool. It may be hard to see, but the smaller beakers are for raising the baby jellyfish:

This pufferfish looked so happy!

You exit the aquarium through this really cool garden. There weren’t any fish in it though, which I thought was odd.

That’s it!