
Ninety seconds on Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan
Best for the Pacific tank, nine metres deep, which the route circles on its way down, so the whale shark and the manta rays pass you again and again from different floors.
Walking down from the eighth floor takes you through a Japanese forest stream with its otters, then round the Pacific tank, which you meet again on almost every level. The first corner where the tank comes into view, just past the Great Barrier Reef, is the most crowded; keep walking, because the windows further down are calmer.
Feeding happens at the surface, so the upper levels see the splash, and the lower windows show the whale shark upright, swallowing. On the fourth floor, a slab of the tank's acrylic, thirty centimetres thick, is on show. Lower still come the giant spider crabs of the Japan Deep and the jellyfish room.
After five o'clock the lighting and music change for the evening. The Aleutian Islands tank, near the start, is closed for renovation.
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