Tokyo Sea Life Park: Sharks and Tunas

Whenever I am travelling, I like to visit the aquariums as they are places where I can see some of the local fishes of one particular place. I have been to the one in Cape Town of South Africa and the one in Genoa of Italy. When I was in Japan, I went to the one in Tokyo called Tokyo Sea Life Park (Kasai Rinkai Suizokuen).

I went there with a postgraduate student from Vietnam called Lam. He is very enthusiastic about photography and I suggested to him to go to an aquarium to practice the panning technique. We chose Tokyo Sea Life Park over the other aquariums around Tokyo because its entrance fee was the cheapest amongst those we have found on the Internet.

The main entrance to the aquarium is a big glass dome that lets in the natural light.

Before we entered the aquarium, I spotted some tensioned roofs with their reflections that resembled fishes.

One of the main highlights in Tokyo Sea Life Park is the hammer-head shark tank. There were more than ten of them swimming in this tank at the time of our visit. The lighting was quite poor inside the tank and I was having a hard time getting clear shots of these wonderful creatures.

The main showcase of Tokyo Sea Life Park is the donut-shaped tank containing 2.2 million litres of water. The blue-fin tunas swim around freely in a circular circuit. Although the lighting in this tank is slightly better than the hammer-head shark tank, the blue-fin tunas were swimming very fast that was quite a challenge to my panning photography.

Wordless Wednesday – An Alien Bug

Location: Jambusan, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Date taken: October 12^th, 2008
Camera equipment: Nikon D300 + Micro-Nikkor 200mm f/4D

Sarawak Laksa

Sarawak Laksa is a 'must taste' food for anyone visiting Sarawak, particularly Kuching. It is a signature hawker food of the State of Sarawak.

Some time ago, my mother was given a few packets of laksa paste by our relative who claimed to make the best laksa paste in Kuching. So, my mother cooked laksa on one of the weekends to feed the whole family.

The savoury part of laksa is boiled vermicelli or rice noodles. There are two types of rice noodles in Sarawak, the round ones and the ribbon ones. In laksa, the round ones are normally used.

The other important ingredients are shredded omelette, shredded chicken meat and boiled shrimps. Another thing that I forgot to take the photos is the boiled bean sprouts.

Once all these ingredients are put in a bowl with the soup cooked from the laksa paste, a bowl of authentic Sarawak Laksa is ready to be served. Garnished with some coriander leaves, the taste of the laksa becomes more fragrant.