Fishies!!!!

On my last weekend in Iwakuni, well Japan, I decided I was going to pack one day and hit the cheap movies up, ugh seriously you mean I am going to have pay more than $3 for a movie….o and I bet I will stand for the National Anthem the first time or so at the movies, do you think I will get weird looks at the movie theater in Georgetown? So I needed a game plane for Sunday so after chatting with the fantabolous Hiroe I realized I did all the must do’s in Iwakuni so I decided to rent a car and have an adventure. After realizing no one could go with me I decided to head down to the aquarium. One of the great things about living on a military base is that there are so many resources to help you plan a trip so I printed off the directions and headed down to Shimnoseki. When I went to the car rental place the lady was surprised that I was going by myself, well she was also taken back that I was going at all since it is about a 3 hour drive. I love to drive, it is in my blood, I think both of my parents live in their cars. So for me doing a 3 hour drive is no big deal, hello we did it almost every weekend in the winter heading up to the Lake. In the States I am a fast driver, only one ticket though and that was in North Carolina with NY license plates and a retired NYPD father so of course I was going to get a ticket but in Japan I happily get passed. The speed limit is pretty low here, it is usually 60kmh but was 80 kmh on this highway which translates to 49 mph and so I was speeding a little bit. So 2 ½ hours later I was there. To get there I had to go back to the scene of the crime, the exit (or interchange as they call them here), that made me super lost when I picked up my friends. What took me over 2 ½ hours from Iwakuni Interchange took me maybe 15 or 20 minutes to get to on Sunday, o directions how nice it is to have you.

I wish I took a picture of my car because it was a little black ghetto pimp mobile, my coworker commented on it and said that it was my gangsta mobile so it wasn’t just my thought. I noticed that other cars were noticing me, not just because of my car but because my license plates tell everyone “HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!! FOREIGNER ON THE ROAD WATCH OUT.” Well not really but in a way yes, my license plates say MCAS Iwakuni on them but in general foreigners license plates are different then Japanese. Japanese license plates have Kanji symbol on them and foreigners have a Y or E in the beginning. I kind of like this but don’t you think if we did that in the US there would be lawsuits, marches, and who knows what else saying we were profiling.

Kaikyokan Aquarium was pretty cool and surprisingly had a lot packed into it. I haven’t been to an aquarium in a few years and the last one I went to was the National Aquarium in DC, it is so small I mean did you even know we had one in downtown DC. The aquarium in DC felt like you were at a glorified pet store but this one felt like you were in the ocean. They had huge tanks that would go a floor or so down and so you were always surrounded by fish. There were also passages with fish swimming over you and underneat your feet. They had some very talented dolphins and seal.

When you are about to leave, feeling a little bit like “hmmm what else” you walk down the steps to an incredible penguin habitat. Not only can you see the penguins swimming next to you but then you walk around the corner and they have the huge tanks where you can see them swim deep under the water and then underneath your feet as you walk in between the tanks. Then you go outside to a whole outdoor habitat.

I was very impressed with the aquarium and it was totally worth the 2 ½ hour drive. I mentioned before that tolls in Japan are ridiculous if you do not have an ETC pass and this was another great example. If it was not for my free passes through the rental car it would have cost me 37,500 yen EACH way that is roughly $45 each way or $90. Could you imagine having to pay that in the states!!