While my mother-in-law was in town (err...continent would be more appropriate? Hahaha...) we took her to the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise in Yokohama.  This is a really neat aquarium that is on an island and has a hotel, restaurants, rides (yes, like actual roller coaster rides), gift shops, petting "zoo," and lots more.  Sadly, both times I went I didn't get to experience as much as I wanted.  The first time was for a field trip with Thing Two, and that was a crazed day, considering all my group really cared about was finding ice cream and the gift shop full of toys.  When we went this past time, it was a miserable day and we sure didn't want to be walking around in the viciously cold, windy, wet weather, so we rushed through a lot of it.  Regardless, we love aquariums, and here are a few pics to commemorate our visit :)

I always feel bad for the penguins after seeing Happy Feet.

I love this picture of my MIL enjoying the view :)

This little fella is a rebel, isn't he?

This reminded me of Finding Nemo.  Without the colorful fish, of course...

MUAH!!

This is a "sponge crab," but seriously, did they need to super glue a sponge to him??

My mother-in-law Brenda amazed over the Japanese Giant Crabs, while I admire them and get hungry!

Me playing peek-a-boo behind the sleepy (dead?) octopus

Another lovely critter

Alex got selected to as a volunteer (it helped that I forcefully held her arm in the air)!  It was quite interesting watching her trying to figure out what the person was saying.  In Japanese. In front of a huge audience!

Guess it wasn't that hard to figure out!

GOAL!!!