Echizen Matsushima Aquarium

This is a hands-on, experiential aquarium where visitors can see, touch, and learn in a fun environment right in front of the Sea of Japan. Fun attractions such as dolphin shows and penguin walks are available.

Visitors can also touch seals, sharks, a giant octopus, doctor fish, snow crabs, and lobsters, and feed sea turtles and marine fish.

There are several mini-pavilions, including the Ocean Pavilion, the Fish Pavilion, the Penguins Pavilion, the Fureai Pavilion, the Sea Turtle Pavilion, and the Turtle and Frog Pavilion.

The large aquarium “Sango no Umi” in the Ocean Pavilion is very popular, and visitors can take off their shoes to enter the relaxing floor and watch coral reefs and colorful fish swimming from above on the glass floor.

Visitors can also enjoy floating on their stomachs on the surface of the sea. The walls and ceiling are mirrored, so visitors can lie face up and feel as if they are under the sea.

The Penguin Pavilion with an underwater tunnel is also popular, where visitors can watch three species of penguins that live in the subantarctic zone swim as if they were flying in the sky through an underwater tunnel.

In the Penguin Pavilion, visitors can observe the cactus-filled habitat of the Humboldt penguins. Visitors can also see flying penguins in a heart-shaped tank in the air.

The “Fish Pavilion” is lined with old-fashioned train-window tanks, a rare display method that has been carefully maintained for more than 60 years.

At the “Seafood Touch Corner,” visitors can touch eels, kuei, echizen crabs, and lobsters, and feed sea bream, yellowtail, mackerel, and mahata grouper.

Also on display are “rare specimens,” which visitors can view at any time, such as a longnose hawkfish, a tench, a giant squid, an Etizen jellyfish, and the genitalia of a blue whale.

In summer, visitors can enter the “jabu-jabu seawater pool” where about 1,000 fish swim and feed in their bathing suits.

In addition, “rocky shore creature observation sessions” are held twice a day on the beach in front of the aquarium, where visitors can search for and observe rocky shore creatures with aquarium staff. Visitors can listen to detailed explanations from the aquarium staff and learn from them.

During the GW and summer vacation, visitors can stay overnight in front of the aquarium tank in the “All Night Aquarium” program.