Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and Tempozan Ferris Wheel

Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and Tempozan Ferris Wheel are Osaka’s top attractions. They are very family-friendly and children, as well as adults, will enjoy going to these places. These two top attractions are next to each other, so if you go to one of them, you should not miss visiting the other. The Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan is one of the largest aquaria in the world with more than 15 large tanks and 30,000 creatures. On the other hand, Tempozan Ferris Wheel was crowned the tallest Ferris Wheel from 1997 to 1999. Its height is 112.5 meters and 100 meters in diameter. Its 60 gondolas can take in 480 passengers at any given time. This Ferris Wheel was named after Japan’s lowest mountain called Tempozan, which is only 4.53 meters high.

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An adult can buy a bundled admission ticket to the above two attractions that cost 3,000 Yen per adult. There is no bundled ticket for children, however, a ticket for child above 7 years old cost 1,200 Yen for Kaiyukan and 800 Yen for Tempozan (total 2,000 Yen), which is still relatively cheaper than an adult ticket. Click here for more details.

To get to Kaiyukan and Tempozan is fairly easy. Taking the subway from Namba station, a transfer from Hommachi station to Osakako station. From Osakako station, just a 5 minutes walk and you can get to Kaiyukan and Tempozan.

Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan

The highlight of Kaiyukan is the “Pacific Ocean” tank which houses the whale sharks, the largest fish species in the world. The whale sharks were huge, we were in awe when looking at them. Other than the gigantic whale sharks, we also love the sensory pool where we could touch the sharks and stingrays. Their skin was soft as silk and also very slippery. However, the sensory pool had a very strong “fishy” smell.

Other than that, we also got to see the feeding for some of the marine creatures and took some photos of other creatures.

Ice Cream Time

After leaving Kaiyukan and before going to Tempozan, we took a break to have a little snack. In between both the attractions, there is a mall called Tempozan Marketplace. This mall is not very big but we could find some restaurants, cafes, retail stores and convenience stores here. We decided to get the Milky Ice Cream, which was just outside of the mall. The ice cream was creamy and irresistibly yummy…

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Tempozan Ferris Wheel

Next stop is the Tempozan Ferris Wheel. You can choose to buy the tickets from the ticketing machines or get into a queue if you want to buy from the Tempozan staff. If you already bought the bundled tickets from Kaiyukan, you can skip the this and go straight to the entrance.

Once we reached the entrance, there were two queues to join. One was the queue for clear see-through glass gondolas, the other queue was for the normal gondolas. Take note that the see-through glass gondolas are limited and so it will have a longer waiting time to board the gondolas.

We went to the queue near the sunset time so there was a long queue for the clear see-through gondolas. To save time, we decided to take the normal gondola instead.

The experience was amazing. It was like staring at a beautiful sunset painting with reddish mixed with orange hue at the bay’s horizon. At the top of the Tempozan, we could catch the sight of Osaka city and a giant white moon rising on the opposite side, telling us the night was approaching.

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Tips: go to Kaiyukan first as there are more visitors there, Tempozan is less crowded. However, Tempozan will have more visitors during sunset. So if you plan to see the sunset, be sure to go early.

Interested to read more about Osaka? Click the following links.

8 tips you need to know before going to Osaka

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The iconic Osaka Castle

Osaka Museum of History

The view of Osaka city from Umeda Sky Building