Tokyo Sea Life Park Glass Dome

The first Japanese public aquarium was opened in Tokyo in 1882, at the Ueno Zoological Garden. So, the Tokyo Sea Life Park, located in the Kasai Rinkai Park, was built to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Ueno Zoo and was opened on October 1989.

The building was designed by a well known architect, Yoshio Taniguchi, and the entrance is truly spectacular, a huge glass dome built on a concrete platform, surrounded by a huge pool.

At the time of the opening, the Tokyo Sea Life Park was the first aquarium in the world which showed blue fin tunas swimming in a huge tank and for that time, the 2200 tons tank was an amazing achievement. Due to technological advances, since then the record was broken many times (now, the biggest water tank in Japan is the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, built in 2002, with 7500 tons!), but the doughnut-shaped tank from Kasai Rinkai is still impressive and well worth a visit, still being the biggest aquarium in Tokyo.