Japan Aquarium

I recently returned from a two week holiday in Japan, where some of the aforementioned zoo and aquarium dreams came to pass, most significantly the latest one involving a hippo attack. I may blog about it at a later date. However, it is not just dreams that have a habit of forming my reality, the reverse also occurs. The other night I had a dream influenced by my last day in Japan, where I visited an aquarium in Sunshine City, Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The aquarium was on the roof of a high rise shopping mall, yet in the dream it was part of a leisure centre, or onsen.

In the dream, it was my penultimate day in Japan, and I went to the swimming pool with my family. The indoor pool was enclosed by glass panels, on the other side of which was a restaurant and expansive aquarium tanks holding many species of tropical fish and manatees. It was time to leave however, so I made the decision to return the following day with Li to explore further. True to our plans, we came back the next day and paid our admission. It was a wild, stormy day with a pink sky and frequent squalls of rain, a typhoon on its way.

The aquarium was divided into three zones: tropical, coastal, and polar. The largest zone, the tropical, was the one I had glimpsed the day before, with the fish and manatees. Because I had entered from a strange angle, I was unable to find this particular section again. The coastal zone was situated outside, adjoining the sea, and a number of sea-lions frolicked in pools and performed tricks. There was also a fun fair here with rides, arcade machines, and various cafes. The polar zone was indoors and was essentially a massive tank filled with floating ice floes and polar bears. There did not however, seem to be any solid land for the bears to climb onto.

Over the top of the polar tank was a fancy restaurant where diners could look through the glass tables  and see the bears swimming around beneath. Some of the tables had holes cut into them where cubs could poke their heads through and be fed and petted. I stroked the neck of a polar bear cub and it felt warm, despite the freezing water it had emerged from. I snapped a few photos of the other polar bears performing underwater acrobatics, then spent the rest of the dream trying to access the manatee hall but getting lost in gift shops instead.