Jinja and Shoga: Life in the Land of the Rising Sun

    As I mentioned before, we visited Enoshima Aquarium last Wednesday. For those of you who don't already know, Enoshima is a small island in Sagami Bay. The island is part of the city of Fujisawa and is next to some of the closest beaches to Tokyo and Yokohama (and therefore often jam-packed). It's linked to the mainland by a 600-meter-long bridge, so you may drive onto it if you feel up to battling the crowds.
  We chose to head to the aquarium via train and then monorail, which took about an hour and 15 minutes, more or less, from Yokohama.
  The aquarium itself is located on the mainland, quite close to the island. It has a pretty impressive collection of ocean wildlife, including over 8,000 sardines in the Big Sagami Bay Tank. We missed the sardine show (where they swim together in a tight spiral formation) but were able to get an idea of how it would look just by viewing them in the tank.
 I was also really impressed by the Jellyfish Fantasy Hall, said to feature one of the world's best collections of these rather amoeba-like little creatures. I probably could've spent a few hours in there had we not been trying to find seats in time for the show at the Dolphin Show Stadium. While I had to admit that I've seen much better shows at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, I also realize that I've been spoiled growing up near one of the world's best aquariums, and this show wasn't half bad.
  The only downside to our visit was at the penguin exhibit, where we and a bunch of other patrons unfortunately witnessed an awful keeper kicking one of the penguins out of his way. There were quite a few gasps when this happened, and I was so angry that I came close to tapping on the glass to get the jerk's attention. Unfortunately, there weren't any other workers around to complain to, although I'm still contemplating emailing the aquarium and telling them about the animal abuse we witnessed. Poor penguin!

                                           Beautiful jellyfish

                                At the dolphin show

                             The famous sardines

                              More jellyfish



                               The Big Sagami Bay Tank