Students in NILS short term programs had a great time at Marine World, aquarium in Fukuoka.

This week’s activity was to visit Fukuoka’s aquarium, called Marine world. It’s a big aquarium with many cook features. The sea otters were my favorite but they also have a huge tank three stories high with a big panoramic window you can observe the fish – including sharks from. They also have two performances with dolphins and sea lions doing lots of tricks in exchange for food. The show is open air with the sea in the background, an impressive sight. I got a bit carried away looking at all the animals that I forgot to take photos for next week’s presentation about one of the animals we were supposed to choose, oops!  —Adam-san

I absolutely love aquariums. Marine animals are definitely my passion outside of doing art! If I hadn’t decided to become a designer/artist, I would be a marine biologist! Or at least a marine life teacher of some sort.

I really wanted to see the sunfish or マンボウ at the aquarium but they didn’t have it. They did, however, sell a sunfish toy! Of course I had to get it. I also got a cute whale shark which is probably close to the sunfish in terms of how much I like them. I like the word for sunfish in Japanese! It sounds like mambo! It’s a very cute name for one of my favorite animals.

We got to see Marine World’s famous dolphin (or イルカ) show! I really wanted to be a dolphin trainer when I was little so I felt extremely touched at how amazing and smart these animals are. I wish they had talked a little more at the end of the show about how to protect these beautiful mammals since it would have given a lot of  kids that were watching the show an interest in helping make the planet and thus these animals live a little better lives. There was also a sea lion show! They were very cute! Sea lions are very smart as well but people in America often confuse them with seals. It seems that in Japan they are very well differentiated which makes me happy!

The panorama tank was amazing! I have never seen sharks with a small head and plump body like that except in cartoons! It was cool we got to see a diver go into the water and answer some questions. It was really hard understanding him though since he had to breathe through the snorkel while he talked. I wish I could have asked him a few questions myself!

I also had wanted to see sea angels (or クリオネ) but Marine World didn’t have them, however, they had jellyfish! I love jellyfish a lot as well! I’m happy I got to see them.

Marine World was very fun!! I’m very happy I got to go!  —Stephanie-san

Recently we went to Marine World: an aquarium. It is up a few steps and made for a very nice view. The marine life was also very interesting, with a few new additions which made it very interesting. We were also in time for a dolphin show which was interesting to see. There were many different forms of marine life, some of which I hadn’t seen yet. All in all it was an interesting experience.  —Alex-san