Our new favourite animal...

A cheerful looking fish

So, we all had a great night's sleep last night.  Tom did so well that we had to wake him at 10am otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do anything today.

It was raining again today, not just raining but pouring.  The forecast was for sustained showers.  What to do?  As I said, we are running out of things to do, but one thing that was on our list was the Aquarium in Otaru, so we decided to head off there.

We walked down to Sapporo station, got ourselves a very nice bun each for breakfast and then headed on the train to Otaru.  Otaru is on the coast, and, I guess on a nice day the ride would be beautiful as it hugs the coast for quite a way but today it looked very grim as it was lashing it down.  We got to the station and dashed across the road to the bus station to get the bus to the Aquarium as it was quite a way out of town.  It took a good 30 mins on the bus and when we arrived it was lashing down and windy - in fact today I was cold for the first time, and of course today was the first day I didn't take my coat with me as on previous days wearing my coat had been a bit boil in the bag, and carrying it was annoying!  Typical - never get it right - we had to make do.

Up close and personal with Uchio

Anyway we arrived and were greeted with umbrella bags to put our umbrellas in to try to keep the floors dry and then we headed in.  This was quite an old aquarium - looked a bit tired and unloved and the enclosures were quite small but it was good enough.  First off we saw some turtles including one 3 flippered turtle - Tom actually felt quite sorry for him, but as we explained, he's certainly in the right place now, and he seemed happy enough in his tank swimming about.  I wonder what happened to him?  There was a tank with a huge sting ray and some smaller (zebra and bull head) sharks.  The sharks were being lazy, lying on the bottom.

There was a fugu in a tank by itself and a huge Napoleon in another tank - I have always liked Napoleans, seem like gentle giants floating by - when I dived in the Red Sea I saw loads of them.  There were also lots of boring silver fish: mackerel, trout etc etc, and an exhibit of massive massive Sturgeon as well as Arapaima which are native to the Amazon.  When we finished the tanks the route took us outside - it was hammering it down, so we got our umbrellas up and ran outside to see where to go.  There was an outdoor show but we weren't interested.  We did, however, find a restaurant, so we headed in there and chose our food (good job we had Matt with us as it may have been almost impossible without him - all in Japanese (although there were photos) and done by vending machine ticket AND then they call out to you when your meal is ready - a triple whammy if you can't read or speak Japanese (not a complaint - just an observation that in the outreaches of the country it is still very difficult to get about if you don't have the language).  Tom and I had ebi ramen and Matt had fried rice.  Once again made and served by old ladies.

Uchio relaxing

We were debating what to do after lunch as it was still lashing down, we discovered that there was another floor in the aquarium that we had missed so we needed to do that.  We also wanted to see the walruses.  They were next door to the aquarium, we braved the pouring rain and went to see them.  Do you know what, the pouring rain didn't matter anymore, the walruses were fantastic company.  They were a family of 3: Daddy, Uchio who apparently is a gentle giant, his Mrs who is quite feisty and their daughter.  Daddy was quite big: 1200 kilos, actually when I say quite big, what I really mean is he was enormous.  He was a bit of a tart though and liked to hold out his flipper to us as he passed.  He was also full of gas - farting and burping as he went a long.  Quite the entertainer.  We stayed a while and then realised that the walrus show was almost about to start so we stayed where we were to watch.  We were very glad that we did - they did a really good show: waving, blowing us kisses and drenching us (didn't matter we were all soaked through anyway).  It was very enjoyable and very worth it.

Giant salamander

We went back into the aquarium very wet but very happy, all of us with a new favourite animal.  We found the upstairs which included a more modern restaurant (still hard to use without Japanese) and a giant salamander which is the biggest salamander in the world.  We then noticed lots of people heading outside so we investigated...there was a dolphin show about to happen, and there was a covered walkway to get to it so we decided to head along.  Yay, the building in which the show took place had a roof, so it was dry and packed with people so warm too.  We sat down and enjoyed the show which started with a sea lion and finished with 3 rather splendid looking dolphins.  At this point we were pretty much done so we decided to cut our losses and head back to Sapporo.  We headed out into the driving rain to the bus stop, luckily one came along straight away and we were able to cram on, then back to Sapporo.  Not wanting to go outside again today, we headed to the restaurant floor for an early tea and decided on okonomiyacki - always a firm favourite.  At this restaurant we had to make our own, not a problem as we make them at home, and they were yummy if not beautiful.

Then we headed back home and guess what...the rain had finished AND for the first time since we got here it was windy.  We walked briskly home and didn't get any wetter - hurray.  What a day it had been.  We got home to see the beginnings of a rainbow, could this mean that the weather maybe clearing?  Let's hope so.  We got home, had showers and warmed up.  One good thing about it being much cooler, we don't need the fans on today or tonight - which will make it much easier for sleeping tonight.