Sorry for not posting much this last week, I work 2 jobs and managed to get a bad sinus infection on top of all that so needless to say this week wasn't a good one.
Yokohama
A perfect day dawned for our day trip to Yokohama and the Hakkejima Sea Paradise, which is a manmade island aquarium/amusement park. It would be the first time we would be able to see the sea on our trip and my best friend, who before this trip had never even flown on a plane before let alone seen the sea was very excited for this.
It took roughly 1 hour and a half to reach Yokohama from our AirBnB and immediately upon exiting the train I could smell the sea. We couldn't see it yet but I knew it was very near and with anticipation, we followed the google maps directions that led us across a very busy road and suddenly we could see the sea.
It wasn't much of a view, at least not yet, that would come later as we crossed that busy road and up a long flight of stairs to an elevated track. Taking the small train it would take us to Hakkejima Sea Paradise, the tracks would follow the curve of the bay before we were dropped off.
Hakkejima Sea Paradise and the bridges leading to it were incredibly scenic and I took quite a few pictures, in them you could even see the unique pyramid design of the aquarium. The island had a nice park set up by the sea and after taking some pictures we decided to head inside and find something to eat.
After entering the park we headed towards aquarium, to do that we had to pass through the children's rides and it was interesting to see how the classic amusement park rides having the Japanese children's anime motif, we even saw DOMO!!
Incidentally, I really liked the feel of the amusement park section, they did a nice weave of nature + amusement park which reminded me a little of Disney's Animal Kingdom.
That feeling ended after we ran into the massive concrete mall that ringed the aquarium, the restaurants, Umi Fish Farm and the petting zoo. After looking at all the options we decided to eat at La Tarafuku due to its convenience, it was an all you can eat buffet. They even had a chocolate fountain!!
The aquarium was very interesting, though it felt like the larger fish/animals were in smaller cages than they should have been overall it was a very good place to visit. In the hall that offered views of the polar bear, walrus, and seals they had a glowing tree that would play awesome light show & movie every 15 minutes. They did have a place for a sea show but due to it still being early spring they didn't have any scheduled.
Afterwards we wandered over to the Umi Farm, we didn't know exactly what it was at first, we all thought the boat docked there would take us out to sea for a short sea ride. We didn't realize til later that the boat was for atmosphere, that you were supposed to take a fishing pole + bait being offered by the shops next door and go capture some fish in these holding pens. After you captured them, the staff would quickly cook them for you and you could eat them on the boat if you wanted to.
The petting zoo was great, I managed to pet a manatee and dolphin. I also got a really good picture of a seal, I am just mad that I somehow managed to get my finger somehow in the photo, grrrr.
Feeling very tired we decided to call it a day and took the train from Yokohama back to Yūtenji Station and ate at Miraizaka Yūtenji Station Front, a local izakaya that had very good barbecued meat.
My next post will be about our Odaiba trip and the incredible time we had at Sega Joypolis.