During the second day of the tour we did another craft activity. These egg-shaped faces are called Shirakawa Daruma. They are made to represent wishes. In the photo below you can see that the yellow Daruma has only one eye. If you are waiting for the wish then the Daruma has only one eye. If the wish is for your whole life, then you will paint both eyes.
In the morning after we left the hotel, we went to a park in the Shirakawa area. Nanoko Park. Dango is the snack pictured below. We had dango that was prepared in the local style. In the spring this park is a popular location for cherry blossom viewing.
Hanami (花見, literally "flower viewing") is an interesting tradition in Japan. In the spring when the cherry trees blossom and I experience it myself, I will be sure to make a post about it.
After we ate lunch we went on a boat tour of the Iwaki harbor. It was enjoyable to see the ocean, and we went on a very pretty day.
In the background of this photo you can see a giant glass structure. That is Aquamarine Fukushima, and it was the next stop on our tour.
When we were getting our tickets, I had a long conversation with a Taiwanese friend about the pronunciation of aquamarine. He found the pronunciations of aquamarine, aquarium, and aqua all difficult.
One really neat part of this aquarium was a demonstration of two major ocean currents that met near Fukushima. There are two tanks with the different fish from each current, and you can walk between them and see the fish on either side.
This aquarium was hit very severely by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Because it is on the coast, when the tsunami came all of the employees in the building had to take shelter on the highest floor of the building. In the aftermath, there was no water or electricity with which to maintain the tanks. When employees were evacuated to shelters because of the nuclear reactor, some of them went so far as to take fish with them to the shelters. Below you can see a what the ocean current exhibit looked like some time after the disaster.
From the hard work of the employees, the aquarium was able to reopen just four months after the disaster. I found it to be a very pretty aquarium.
