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Published: April 23rd 2024
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Late start this morning. Left 8:45 and went down the road to the hotel's cafe. We didn't think it had what we wanted, so we decided to go to the Umeda Sky Building. Not best day for it as it's raining, but thats okay. We hailed a taxi because otherwise we'd need to catch a train and bus and with the rain, worth the extra cost ($21). We reached the Umeda Sky Building at 9:10, 20 minutes before opening. We decided to go to the cafe at the top for breakfast. The building is very impressive. The elevator to the 39th floor is glass so you can see 360 degrees as you ascend, then you take an escalator through a glass tube to get to the 40th floor. We had very nice breakfast of coffee and a variety of croissants. As we were early and there rain, it wasn't crowded at all so we had a lovely leisurely walk around looking at the exhibits and views. The building itself is an attraction, an amazing construction. We left at 11:45 and decided to catch a taxi again for the longer 30 minute drive to the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. The Aquarium is situated
at Osaka Port and we discovered that the Tempozan Ferris Wheel and Lego Discovery Centre is in the same precinct. We had a quick lunch at the shopping centre which houses Lego DC and made a decision while I was lining up to buy tickets, to get the combined ticket for the Aquarium and Lego DC. Went into the Aquarium at 13:00. It was an amazing aquarium, one of the biggest in the world apparently. There were fish, seals, penguins, jellyfish, coral etc from all regions of the world. There were even giant whale sharks in the main tank, which you walked around in a downward spiral and off-shoot tanks on your left. We spent about two hours there, then hopped over to the Lego DC at 15:00. Lego DC had a couple of rides, a 4D Cinema, games and plenty of places for kids to build. Oscar loved it but especially just the opportunity to build things and play. We left around 17:00 and then hopped onto the Tempozan Ferris wheel for a 15 minute ride. There was a 25 minute wait if you wanted to get into a gondola with a glass floor, but we didn’t want waste
time so hopped into a standard gondola straight away. We them made our way to the station and took us about 50 minutes to travel to Nagai Station, right next to the Teamlab Botanical Gardens display which was booked for 19:15. We found a cafe called Yanmar Marche which had some nice food and unlimited drinks for $4.50. Oscar had fallen asleep on the train and when Krissy woke him up, he didn't want any of the leftover burger Krissy had kept for him. She then took him over to the counter to choose something and he chose a strawberry pancake with cream and ice cream. More like dessert rather then dinner, but it made him happy again after being woken up. It was good he had a nap though as he was wide awake for our second Teamlab experience, this time, in Osaka Botancial Gardens. Some of the installations were similar to what we had seen in Tokyo but it was a very pleasant experience walking around the Botanical Gardens at night with the special light installations, not unlike our Vivid displays in Sydney's Botanical Gardens. We didn't finish until about 21:10 and we then made our long 60
minute journey back to our hotel via two trains, so it was a very late night, especially for Oscar. It was a big last full day in Japan for all of us. Krissy pointed out that our Japan holiday has been book-ended with Teamlab. Our first and last experiences in Japan, as tomorrow is shopping day.
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