Japan Lights: Sunshine Aquarium [1/2]

Sunshine Aquarium [1/2]

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Would you like to see a shark, penguin, ocean sunfish, giant octopus and dyeing dart frog on the rooftop of a skyscraper in the middle of the city? Just go to Sunshine City Aquarium then! Located in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, it's really a place worth seeing.

Aquarium exists since 33 years now and is located on the last floor of Sunshine City department store. Getting there is a little tricky since you have to use the elevator and there’s no number of floor- it’s considered “roof”, but don’t worry, in Sunshine City information desks are almost everywhere, so it’s not hard to get help. Just after the elevator’s door there’s a ticket booth, cashiers speak English and give tourists a pamphlet with map and description along with the ticket.

This fountain is the first thing to see after going out of the elevator

The whole aquarium is very well organised- there’s a path to follow, each floor has a name and theme and is divided into sections. Each aquarium has a description and very useful information boards consisting of pictures and names of animals living behind the glass.

Information board with the name and description of the section

Information about animals living in aquarium

Ocean Journey

The first level of aquarium is named Ocean journey and consist of ocean fish and animals. There is a huge aquarium in the centre, surrounded with sitting places, called Sunshine Lagoon. Every day there’s a Water Show performance held in there. During that show people can watch scuba diver swimming along with fish and feeding them. It’s really a nice view, since sometimes this person catch some shy fishes and brings them so they can be seen by the audience. It’s also one of the rare occasions to see all the fishes from this tank gathered together.

Sunshine Lagoon- the biggest tank in Aquarium

There's so many fishes in there from the small ones to the really big ones.

Bowmouth guitarfish and its information board

There’s a few small aquariums with the coral reef just at the beginning. In one of them they are even neatly put on pillars like an exhibits.

Another interesting thing to see is a brownbanded bambooshark (which was so energetic that it took me a long while to take a photo of him) and his live egg that was plastered to the wall of aquarium. It was possible to see a tiny unborn fish move inside!

Brownbanded bambooshark and its egg

Near to this fish there’s a not so big tank with giant octopus. It’s really big and constantly moves its arms which can be clearly seen through highs glass wall.

Northern Pacific Giant Octopus

My personal favourite is the small tank full of sea angels. These tiny creatures really look like angels, moving their tiny wing-like fins while slowly rising up. Unfortunately they were so little that it was not possible to take a good shot of them.

Sea angel

Just after octopus and sea angels there's a huge tank with lots of rocks made for the sea otter. There's two of them and they are simply adorable, swimming but and forth and laying on the stones, all the time being playful and funny. It can be seen on this movie.

Next part is the absolutely stunning Jellyfish Tunnel. As the names says it’s a tunnel filled with jellyfishes. There’s a really nice lighting there which changes colours all the time.