Aquarium / Tempozan Harbor Village, Osaka

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its very nice aquarium, most unique there is the shark whale which is amazingly big you can see in the picture. and the eating show is also very nice.
other sharks and strange fish are all present in a very bigggg cylinder which is 5 floors tall and you keep going down and down watching all the fish in the tank.
others like dolphing, penquins, seals, crabs, gellyfish...etc usual stafff
there is an area for kids to touch the fish in a very shallow pool,, very nice experience for adults and kids.
it costs around 2000 en or 22 dollars...

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its a huage one with a nice view,,, for 700 en per person.

it have around 60 cars, only 4 are transparent so you can see below you. and you can choose to stand the transparent car qeue. its better but if the qeue is long i dont advice cause it takes 15 mins between 2 transparent cars....

There are a few things to do around here. I have been here 3 or 4 times. I mostly enjoyed the Aquarium and the IMAX theater. Except that I would also reccomend the Ferris wheel as it can be quite fun and you get great view of Osaka. One can also find Suntory Museum, a shopping center and Santa Maria Bay cruise. The last one is a double size replica of the ship that Columbus discovered America and you can hop on a 50 minute ride along the Osaka Bay Area. One can buy combo tickets at discounted rates. Last time I was there I got the Aquarium/IMAX ticket at 2500 yen instead of 3000 yen.

This is quite a nice aquarium. It contains a small whale shark, dolphins and many others.
May get crowded with Students though, so go really early or late.

The Main tank is several floors high and the walking course spirals down around it.

Entrance fee is 2000yen for Adults and 900yen for kids.
Check their webpage for closing dates.

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The Aquarium is one of the places I was advised to visit.
As an African, I have had very little contact with the sea really, so this visit gave me the chance to see so many marine creatures in one place- corals, fish, crustaceans.
Some were very colourful, others large and menacing.
It was a great experience.

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Since you've been in Osaka, you may have noticed a giant, friendly-looking cartoon fish (or something) that keeps popping up on signs in the subway or here and there around the city. This is the whale shark kept at the Osaka Aquarium, who would love it if you dropped by to visit (cheesy!). The Aquarium is incredible, and the area surrounding it is a lot of fun too. Two activities other than the Aquarium that I would highly recommend are the nearby ferris wheel, and the Imax 3D. The former will give you a terrific view of the harbour and much of Osaka. It's so big, it takes about half an hour to go all the way around. As for the 3D Imax, this just about blew my mind. We saw Deep Sea 3D, and the 3D technology was incredible. Really, you've got to see it to believe it. Spectacular.

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On a grey, wet, and chilly Saturday 7 April 2007, I headed out to the Osaka Aquarium to see the acclaimed main attraction - the world's only captive whale shark. Despite the rather hefty entrance fee of 2000 yen (about NZ$24), the aquarium is a place I can recommend fully to visitors in Osaka. In fact, compared to an underwater attraction here in Auckland, New Zealand, which charges roughly the same entrance fee, the Osaka Aquarium (or Kaiyukan, as it is known) is far better value for money.
The layout of the aquarium is very clever. Visitors arrive and, after paying the entrance fee, take an esculator to the 8th floor. From there you wind your way back down to ground level, passing progressively 'deeper' waters of the same tanks in the centre and around the edges as you do so. This means you get to view life at all layers of each tank. In some, there isn't much variation (as with the Pacific Dolphins), but in others you do see quite a lot. Despite the noisy little children and the rather crowded feeling you get in places, the aquarium has plenty of amazing sights besides the impressive star attraction in his/her equally impressive tank. This is a must see sight in Osaka. Don't miss the whale shark and the graceful manta ray (in the same tank), the delightful seals and sealions, the spooky and alien-like spider crabs, and the cute and playful sea otters.

Kaiyukan aquarium has 15 tall tanks rising up 8 floors and each tank represents a different habitat such as the " Ring of Fire" and " Ring of Life", over 30,000 creatures can be observed in the tanks.

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You will enjoy it!!
It is interesting, because you will see one very-very big aquarium, but you watch it from different depth: surface, middle, and bottom.

If you go there by 1-day subway ticket, you will get discount for the entrance fee (I forgot, discount 10 or 20%).

I just know that we can buy pass ticket for aquarium + 1 day subway for only 2400 yen at Umeda subway ticket locker. By using the ticket you can get a little discount to Osaka Castle too. Entrance fee for aquarium is 2000, 1 day subway is 850 yen. With pass ticket you can save 450 yen.

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The marine/harbour village in Osaka is the only Aquarim in the the world with a Whale Shark in captivity, the whole complex is well stuctured and planned out as you would come to expect in Japan, the price for entry was around 15GBP not bad espeacially if your intrested in marine life and animals.