Marine Day : A Day at Sea Paradise
(Originally posted on adventurasia.freezope.org around 2003~2004)
As today was a Japanese National Holiday - Umi No Hi (Marine Day), my friend and I decided to go to the Sea Paradise amusement area in Hakajima (about 30 minutes west of Yokohama). It was a very interesting experience and I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in ‘marine mammals’ or other living creatures found in the sea.
The day started out so so. Shortly after I left my apartment (around 9:00 PM) I headed to the nearest ATM machine. It turned out that it was closed! I really needed to find a cash machine as I only had 2000 Yen in my wallet. I then went to the nearest convenience store which had a 24 hour ATM machine - however, it didn’t take cards from other banks, only Sumitomo Mitsui. I was getting a bit worried, I then headed to the grocery store where I knew they had a cash machine for my bank — however, the grocery store didn’t open until 11:00 AM!
As I didn’t have much choice, I got on the train and headed to Shinagawa to meet my friend. Figuring that it was a large station, I thought it wouldn’t be a problem to find an ATM machine… I found one, but it didn’t open until 11:00 AM. I thought this was getting ridiculous - and was kicking myself for being so stupid to not withdraw money the day before. Luckily, once I got into the train platform, I saw an ATM machine that was open, and was able to make the withdrawal.
Getting to Hakejima station was rather complicated - we took the Keikyu line from Shinagawa, then changed trains at Kanazawa Hakkei (actually, neither of us were paying attention,and we ended up in Haneda airport, and had to backtrack…) and from there we had to change trains again. Finally we arrived at Sea Paradise.
The first thing we did was grab some lunch — we went to a place called - Booze Cafe: A Family Restaurant - I thought this was a bit of a strange name for a family style restaurant…
After that we headed to the Aqua Museum where we looked at all the fish and other aquatic life on display - there were about 4 floors of displays - and we probably spent about 3-4 hours going through everything. It’s all quite amazing, and I managed to capture everything on video - hopefully one day in the future I can post it on the Web site.
After looking at the displays, we went to the Aqua Theatre and watched a short film about the Bermuda Triangle - as it was all in Japanese, I had to guess what it was all about - and it was hard for me to stay awake…
After that we went to the Marine Stadium to watch the seals, walruses, dolphins, and humans perform. I was very impressed with the show - the sea mammals were doing things that I’ve never seen before - jumping into the air to hit balloons, jumping over a ‘high jump’ pole, catching rings, doing back flips, synchronized swimming. So impressed was I, that we ended up staying for a second showing.
Afterwards, we headed back to Tokyo, and went to a place called Mizu No Uta for dinner - it’s a nice Japanese izakaya - located in Shinagawa. I believe they’re part of the Bellini, Lowry’s, Momo Paradise, chain…
Filed under: Japan
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