December 3, 2009: Christmas is the Special Time of Year, in which Dolphins get Fed by Santa Claus.

This weekend I went to the aquarium in Osaka. Sometime before the age of 10, I went to the aquarium in Brooklyn, I think, but barely remember anything. So I was excited to go see some big fish in small tanks. How big can the tanks be in a country that is as big as the state of California, anyway?

Well, I found out that they were not very big at all. A whole world of sea life was swimming in tanks that seemed as cramped as a NYC studio is to one human being. But somehow it seemed rather peaceful. As long as the fish was able to swim around the furniture that is the rest of the fish, he was content. Differences in size didn’t seem to matter as well. As fish made their rounds about the tank, huge whale sharks and awkward sunfish, as well as catfish, x-rays, and bottom feeders all shared the same space without even as much as a shove or a sigh. But, then again, what do I know, I can’t speak fish.

It was mesmerizing to watch the fish swim round and round. I was sitting in front of each tank for as much as 10 minutes at a time watching the funny looking fish make their rounds. We spent about three hours in there! My friends and I saw a big nosed fish and jokingly called it a French person. To the fish with weird antennas or camera looking probes on their forehead, we called them CIA spies. There were tanks filled with crabs, others with octopuses, and a whole area just for the different kinds of jellyfish. I saw my very first sea turtle in person and fell in love with it. I wish I lived in Hawaii and could hang out with them everyday. I also have never seen a puffer fish get mad and puff out, and that was pretty exciting. My favorite player, although, was the most awkward fish: the sunfish. It looks like a regular flat-bodied fish, but instead, the part where the rest of the body and tail is supposed to be just awkwardly stops short and it looks as if it has a flat butt.

I was surprised when I saw Santa Claus at the aquarium. Dressed in your typical Santa suit with the hat and big bag of toys (but here they were most likely just crinkled newspapers to give it that full, but empty look), Santa was there with a tank of oxygen on his back and flippers on his feet in the Dolphin tank. This country is obviously blindly obsessed with Christmas. I say blindly because they ignore the meaning that comes with the holiday, but then again so do I. Materialism is an epidemic, that’s a whole new other topic.

After the aquarium, I bought some Turkish ice cream. I never had Turkish ice cream, and the Turkish guy who sold it to me made it a show by teasing me with ice cream that defies gravity. Eventually I won, but not without realizing that although it looked very different from gelato or regular Hagen Daaz, it tasted the same. Luckily, I love me my chocolate ice cream.

Then we went on “One of the Biggest Ferris Wheels in the World.” Now what does that mean? It can’t be one of the biggest, there’s only one that is the biggest. Anyway, ignoring the ambiguity, we still took a spin to see the city from above as the sky was changing color and it was beautiful. Then we decided to go to Kobe and see some illumination!