すみだ水族館 Sumida Aquarium

Arriving at Skytree Town.

 
On a hot afternoon a few weeks ago, little dude and I headed over to Tokyo Skytree Town to visit the Sumida Aquarium.  Japan has a wealth of aquariums, and this one was quite lovely. It was about the same cost as the Sunshine City Aquarium, and had a fantastic variety of jelly fish as well as a great penguin habitat. I think the fish at Sunshine were a bit greater in variety, but this aquarium had a huge central tank, complete with a gigantic eel and a sizable shark. The Sumida Aquarium also had a neat kids activity area where little dude could take a break from the crowd, sit at a kids sized table, and color a penguin postcard.

 Entering the aquarium!

 The lovely and calming aesthetic of water and water species is so appealing to me.

 Jellies!

 Tiny jellies!

In addition to a standard jellyfish exhibit, this aquarium also had a variety of tanks with small exotic jellies, in particular, we were really into the long-haired varieties, although some of the chubby ones were pretty cool too. They also had a small interactive lab area where we saw day old super tiny jellies (like pin-head tiny), and learned about how and what they eat when they are so small.

 Learning.

 The giant central tank with the shark. He got quite the reaction when he swam right by us, teeth exposed and all!

 Fishy cuteness.

The highlight of our visit was the penguin habitat. We spent a serious amount of time by the giant tank, and little dude wore himself out running back and forth along the stretch of tank, chasing the penguins as they swam. I learned that 25% of the world's captive penguins are in Japan- an interesting bit of trivia!

 

 Chillin'

 Dive!

 Penguin love.

Back by the big tank one more time.

After a long afternoon at the aquarium we stopped for ice cream at Skytree Town, and then took the Tobu Spacia-sen part way home. This train has been on little dude's train wish list since arriving in Japan, as it was one of the first toy trains he received. The train goes a long distance up to the north, and is meant as a long distance train, but we just rode it from Skytree to the next stop, about 10 minutes. It was exciting enough to check it off the train bucket list, and was the perfect end to a great day.

 Tobu Spacia-sen. Another train goal met!

Looking back at Skytree from the train.