Hey everyone! This past weekend Dan and I decided to take an afternoon trip to an aquarium! It was a lot of fun and we had quite the experience. Before we could get to the aquarium though, we had to take the train. Now, I’ve told you all about the train system here before, but let me just give you a better idea of how this particular exploration worked. We had to get off one train, LEAVE the station and cross over through a random bike parking area to go up some steps, walk across a bridge, and find the next train we needed.
Since we’ve never been there before, we had no idea what we were doing. We left the train station and were completely confused. Then Dun…dun..dun…DUNNNNN… I saw Deaf people (did I mention they’re my favorite?!). I started signing to ask for help. The fun part of these two though is that it took a bit more work to effectively communicate. You see, I am strong in American Sign Language and they were strong in Japanese Sign Language and while there are similarities between the two, they are definitely NOT the same language. However, we managed to make it work and they were super excited to meet us and sign with me. They even showed me the sign for where we are living now- it was a really fun experience. They walked us to where we needed to go and sent us on our way.
Once we made it to the train and found our stop (thanks to the Deaf people!), we walked off to find ourselves in a gorgeous park. However it wasn’t exactly where we wanted to be-so thus began our next challenge. We were at the right spot, but how to do we get to where we wanted to be? We decided to take a few photos of the area and use our phones to find the aquarium. It was a colder day and we were right at the water, so the breeze made me really cold- but we still had a lot of fun.
Told you it was beautiful!
Anyway, before long we stumbled upon “Pleasure Island” (I’m not making this up people- that’s the name of this children’s amusement park). We walked around a bit, there were different buildings and stands everywhere but everything was really spread out. We found the food court and decided to get some food- which was interesting to say the least. We tried a cheeseburger, french fries, and a ginger ale…. which tasted odd… all of it (minus the french fries). Then we got some ice cream from a vending machine (yes it happened, yes it was amazing!). Then we were off to get our tickets for the aquarium.
Once we got into the first exhibit of the aquarium we knew something was a bit different. We had a lot of fun looking at the different tanks and wild life- they even had a penguin and polar bear exhibit (don’t worry they weren’t in the same one). Before long we were going up an escalator and were surrounded by the fish and sharks- it was really awesome. As we continued through we had fun seeing all sorts of different fish that we had never seen before- including something that looks like a giant blob with fins on the top and bottom (sun fish).
We took our time going through the different exhibits and walking around the beautiful complex. Before long we headed to the very last exhibit where we were able to pet a dolphin and a penguin (I’ve done both before but it was Dan’s first time). We had a blast at the aquarium and attempting to speak some Japanese (we’re doing a little better). We had a lovely afternoon and enjoyed seeing the different exhibits and the aquarium. We love you all and we’ll be sure to keep you posted. Lots of love from Japan!
Dan and De go on an Adventure 