The tank contains 7500 m³ and many (to many?) fish. Amongst them tunas, a variety of rays and the stars of the show are the three whale sharks and a couple of manta rays.

It is extremely relaxing to sit in front of the big screen (for hours) and watch the fish go by. You can also go to the cafeteria on one of the sides of the aquarium and eat or drink something, while whale sharks swim by. A really awesome experience.

Okinawa is a truly awesome place. After 2.5 h flight from Tokyo to the southwest I arrived in a very hot and humid place. Full of tropical plants and animals. Okinawa is extremely rich in species and is sometimes referred to as the Japanese Galapagos.

A friend of mine is doing a Postdoc here at the Okinawa Institute for Science and technology. A quite new (and rich) research institute – right at the beach.

Okinawa also has the second largest aquarium in the world. I hope we will have time to make it there.

Daibutsu means large Buddha and what more can I say. That is one large Buddha. I saw photos of it, I read about it, but when I finally reached it after a 8 km bikeride and a 3 km hike I was just standing there in awe. 13.35 meters high – sitting. The second largest sitting buddha statue in Japan. And he is sitting there in meditation since 1252. Not caring about the of action going on around him in the past 758 years. In in 1334 and1369 ar storm damaged the building that was originally built around him. People rebuilt it twice. When a hundred years later, in 1458 it was swept away completely by a tsunami, the daibutsu kept sitting and meditating and the people were sick of rebuilding the building. So he has been sitting outside ever since. That was not very conducive to his gold plate tan. There is however still a little bit left on his right cheek. You can also see the inside of the statue, but I guess I came to late that day.

Neverthelesse it was very, very impressive.

Some facts from wikipedia:

• Weight; 93 tons
• Height; 13.35 m
• Length of Face; 2.35 m
• Length of Eye; 1.0 m
• Length of Mouth; 0.82 m
• Length of Ear; 1.90 m

• Length from knee to knee; 9.10m
• Circumference of thumb; 0.85m

And now see for yourself:

Ok. I hope you are impressed. But now check this out: There is another daibutsu close to Tokyo that is even more impressive. I am looking so much forward to seeing that one. Here is a photo of it (from wikipedia) with the Kamakura daibutsu in it, approximately to scale.

Now this is one of the tallest of all statues in the world standing 128 m. You can also get inside – and use the elevator

I hope I can post photos od that giant one day.

Enough daibutsus for today – good night.

I was able to try a lot of new japanese foods, most of which were delicious. But I also had my, so far, least favorite food.  Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera, however thanks to Nasu-san everything is well documented. Thanks again for your enthusiasm taking all the nice photos. And thanks everyone for the fun night.

Here we go. Let’s start with some easy food.

Aji is some Kind of Mackerel but it also means flavor. And the "sauce" is miso with rice vinegar. Flavoury indeed.

The next one might not be suitable for people who live by the credo: “I don’t eat anything that looks at me.” Reminiscent of tatami-iwashi from my very first post, literally hundreds of eyes are staring at you, while you eat Nama-shirasu (raw shirasu). The taste? Do you see the yellow stuff at the top left of the photo? That is ginger and that is the main taste. So no problem there, unless you dislike ginger.

Nama-shirasu. Raw baby sardines.

The next thing was a specialty, that I found kind of funny. Have a look and try to guess what it is, before you read on.

What could this be?

It is deep-fried, obviously. And it is chicken. But which part? I guess the correct way to say it in terms of anatomy would be  rump. Well basically it is a deep-fried chicken butt. It is mainly fatty, but I liked it. Goes well with beer. This is by the way a nice example of how different things are perceived in different cultures. The entry about bird rump in the german Wikipedia reads approximately as follows: “From a culinary perspective, the rump is worthless . Some people recommend removing it before preparing entire animals.” Little do they know how good a deep fried chicken-butt tastes.

The nice thing about eating in this kind of bar is, that you order all evening long – different small dishes that are shared amongst everybody. I really enjoyed that. Since I don’t speak Japanese, I had no clue what people ordered until it was brought to the table. So the oysters came quite as a surprise – and so did their size. They were so large that they were sliced up into 4 pieces. And even these pieces were bigger than the oysters I know from Halifax. But the taste was delicious, nonetheless.

Nice-sized oysters

OK. And now for something completely different. My least favorite japanese food. I don’t even want you make to guess what it is. The white bits are cream cheese. That was the yummy part. The rest is Shiokara. That is small pieces of raw squid, mixed with raw squid liver and salt. Then this mixture is fermented for 1-3 weeks. The taste is twofold. One component is very, very salty. The other is hard to describe. Despite my dislike I even tried it a second time, in hope to find words for it. But although the taste stayed for quite  a while (I had the impression I could still taste it the next day) my efforts to find words were futile. So I guess if you really want to know you have to try it yourself.

Shiokara is supposed to go well with sake, so we had some. The sake was served in a glass standing in a masu (the wooden box, that measures exactly 180 ml). To make sure you get the right amount the glass is filled until it overflows into the masu. After drinking the first few sips, you empty the masu into the glass.

A special form of sake is Nigori-sake. This is simply unfiltered sake. By the way. Did you know that sake is made using a special mold (Aspergillus oryzae). The mold has amylases that turn starch into sugar, which in turn is metabolized to alcohol by yeast.

So I have been playing around with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Those who know what this is can skip the next paragraph.

A SEM is basically a device that generates an electron beam which is directed at the object to be scanned and moved over it line by line. Similar to the electron beam in a TV – back in the days when they used Brownian tubes. When the electrons hit the surface of the object so-called secondary electrons are emitted and they can be detected. Lots of electrons make a bright point of the image, no electrons make a black point. Eventually you end up with a grayscale image that gives you a plastic impression of the scanned object. Since SEMs use electrons instead of light, you can magnify much more than with a normal microscope. Although the sample preparation for SEM is rather straightforward, there is one big problem: Since magnification is so high you will see the tiniest piece of dirt on the surface (e.g. on the 2nd picture).

Bumblebee portrait

Eye of a bumblebee, seen from above

Single facets of the bumblebee eye, each about 1/100th millimeter wide.

A little hair between the facets of the eye. The length of this hair is about 5 micrometer, i.e. 200 of those would be 1 millimeter.

Preparing the samples for SEM is  fun:

They need to be conductive so you put a layer of metal on them (in my case platinum). To do that, you put the sample into a chamber between two electrodes, one of which is platinum. Than you exchange the air in the chamber for a noble gas. After that you create a vacuum. When you switch the electrodes on, a plasma is created, which looks very cool. A plasma is a gas that is can conduct electricity, like the Aurora borealis (Nordlicht).

Now for the science nerds: Which noble gas is used in the sputtering process seen in the next picture?

Platinum sputtering

In the leaflet they give you at the entrance they also proclaim, that it is one of the “Best 50 Park selection in Kanagawa.” Kanagawa is the prefecture and is the size of the Saarland or half the size of PEI. Pretty small? Yes, but there are lots of parks. Anyway – see for yourself.

Oh – by the way: The cheeky Koi has not made any progress in his strive to grow limbs.

Today I just want to show you the Koi that live there. Koi are domesticated carps with color patterns resembling goldfish. They come in tons of color varieties and are not afraid of people at all. I spent about an hour, hanging out with them and taking photos.

One of them even came partly out of the water several times. Suddenly two employees of the garden showed up to feed the koi. They made a sound, by knocking against the food container several times and the kois and turtles came rushing from everywhere. When the guys started to put the food in the water a real feeding frenzy took place.

Since the weather was changing back and forth between cold and warm the past weeks, the whole process lasts longer than usual. Kind of nice for me. The flip side is that it makes extensive “flower-showers” less likely, because the trees are less synchronized. Either way, it is stunning and makes me really happy

But have a look for yourself. First some cherry biology.

A very fresh blossom. Maybe one or two days old. The petals and stamina are purely white.

But when the blossoms get pollinated they change their appearance.

This one has already shows first hints of pink.

This one is as pink as it gets. At the peak of beauty - just about to lose its petals. The pink color is a sign for insects saying "I am already pollinated and I don' t produce any nectar". At least I assume that. If anyone wants to confirm disprove that, you are very welcome.

And now enjoy!