Our last day in Japan… it was a while ago now. Our modem was busted when we got home so I haven’t been able to finish up!
So anyway, last day in Osaka. After checking out, we left our luggage in a locker at the station and got our seats to the airport later. We had an early lunch of shabu shabu, where you cook your own mixed meats. It was really delicious! Then off to Kaiyukan – Osaka Aquarium.
We spent a couple of hours there, it’s pretty impressive! Though we did spend a lot of that time trying to get away from a particularly loud screaming child. Like, full long screams every minute or so. Don’t ask me what the parents were up to, couldn’t see them anywhere! Anyway, I digress… the aquarium’s star is the whale shark, who unfortunately was out for a “medical check up”, but we saw a lot of other cool creatures. Otters, penguins, rays, dolphins, seals, giant spider crabs, sharks, jellyfish… so many!! Really amazingly designed building too, you spiral around the massive inner tank so you can see the fish from different levels. They have a new area where it’s a bit more interactive, the animals are out in the open a bit more, you can go into a snowy room to watch seals, see and smell (disgusting!!!) penguins, and even touch fish and rays. The fish (I think it was a small shark of some kind) I touched felt like sandpaper on some parts and velvety on others! So it was a fun way to spend our last day, with the added bonus of staying out of the heat outside!
Flying out of Osaka wasn’t as good as Tokyo, due to the lack of shops! We picked up a couple of bottles of umeshu (plum liquor) but that was it! The airport itself is cool though, out on a manmade island, looking back at the mainland as the lights came on at night, very cool!
Flight back to Cairns was an hour shorter than our paperwork said, so that was awesome. Though we realised that meant a longer wait in Cairns, but we were lucky enough to get ourselves on an earlier flight, and got back to Melbourne hours before we had planned!
So that’s it, the big trip! An amazing time, lots of memories, lots of photos, lots of ideas for the next one!!

Penguins at Kaiyukan, Osaka

Spider crabs – creepy!