Osaka Aquarium

What Do Osaka Aquarium Tickets Cost By Age?

The adult tier books at about $18, with the exact figure moving a little by date, roughly $17 to $22 depending on the date across the published window. The aquarium's own gate prices for adults run from 2,700 to 3,500 yen by date. The two numbers describe different things, and it helps to keep them apart.

Gate yen are the aquarium's official admission prices, published on its own calendar. The booking price is a separate moving figure in dollars on the operator listing, which follows the gate ladder up and down but is not a yen-to-dollar conversion of it. Treat the yen figures as the aquarium's word and the dollar figure as what the listing charges today.

For the child tier, ages 7 to 15, no dollar price is published at all, so this page shows yen only: 1,400 to 1,800 by date. The young child tier, ages 3 to 6, runs 700 to 900 yen by date, again with no dollar figure published. Under-2s are free at the venue, no ticket needed.

To see how the tiers stack up, take a typical 2,800-yen day, the most common level in the published window. A family of two adults, one child aged 7 to 15, and one child aged 3 to 6 pays 2,800 + 2,800 + 1,400 + 700 = 7,700 yen at the gate level. On a peak 3,500-yen day the same family pays more at every tier simultaneously, which is why the date choice matters more than any buying tactic. The next section shows exactly which dates sit at which level.

Read the three ticket rows above as one ladder, not three separate menus. Adult, child, and young child prices rise and fall together: a day that puts adults at 2,800 yen puts children at 1,400 and young children at 700. No date mixes levels between tiers, so a cheap child day is always a comparatively cheap adult day too.

The half-price disability rate sits outside the ladder. A booklet holder and one carer each pay half of the applicable tier price, and the proof is strict: the physical booklet, the Mirairo ID app, or a MynaPortal record. Staff will not accept a screenshot or a printout, so have the real thing ready at the gate.

At the aquarium itself, payment is straightforward. Credit cards and PayPay work both online and at the counter. iD, PiTaPa, and Rakuten Pay are accepted at the counter only, so anyone relying on those should not expect to use them for an advance purchase.

Finally, "same route for every tier" means exactly that. The young child ticket and the adult ticket buy the same entrance, the same escalator to the eighth floor, the same spiral down through all 18 zones. Price differences reflect age, not access.

Opening Hours And When To Go

Opening hours at Kaiyukan change by date, and the pattern is regular enough to plan around. In the published window, 2 November to 31 December 2026, six different hour sets appear. The most common is 10:30 to 20:00, on 27 dates, covering every ordinary weekday from 4 November to 11 December. Weekends run earlier: 09:30 to 20:00 on 14 dates, the Saturdays and Sundays from 7 November to 20 December plus 2 November and Friday 25 December.

A third pattern, 10:00 to 20:00, covers nine dates from Monday to Thursday, 14 to 24 December, Friday 18 included. The high-demand days stretch further: 09:00 to 20:00 on six dates, 3 November, 21 November, 23 November, and 26 to 28 December. The earliest openings in the window are 08:30: Sunday 22 November, and the three year-end days 29 to 31 December, which also close latest at 20:30.

The link with price is visible in the same calendar. The 08:30 days are exactly the peak-price dates, 3,500 yen for adults, while the cheap floor dates, 15 to 18 December at 2,700 yen, sit inside the 10:00-to-20:00 December pattern. In this window, a later opening tends to mean a cheaper day.

What this page will not do is tell you which hour is quietest. The aquarium does not publish crowd data; the only crowd control it discloses is the capped number of tickets per 15-minute slot. Anyone promising you a dead-calm Tuesday morning is guessing, and so the honest advice is simply to book a slot and arrive inside it.

Two closure dates matter for planning: 13 and 14 January 2027 are the only closed days in the next twelve months. Outside that pair, the aquarium is open every day, including all the holidays in the current window.

Beyond 31 December 2026, neither hours nor prices are published yet. The aquarium rolls its calendar forward about two months at a time, so the January and February picture will appear on its own listing rather than being projected here. This page does not guess future levels.

Before you commit to a date, confirm it on the live listing: the day's opening time, its last admission, which sits exactly 60 minutes before closing, and its price level. The checker above shows the published window in full, and anything outside it needs a fresh look at the source.

Whale Sharks And The Main Tank

The Pacific Ocean tank is the reason the building is shaped the way it is. It holds 5,400 tons of water, measures a maximum of 34 m in length, and reaches a depth of up to 9 m, and the spiral route is built around it so that visitors descend past it level by level. The aquarium frames the effect as a dive: by the bottom of the ramp you have effectively gone down as much as 9 m. The width of the tank is not published, so none is quoted here.

Scale is easier to grasp in the round. The whole building holds about 11,000 tons of water across 14 tanks that recreate 10 regions, housing about 620 species and about 30,000 animals. The Pacific Ocean tank alone accounts for roughly half of that water. Every other zone on the descent, from the Japan Forest to the Falkland Islands, sits in orbit around it.

None of that water comes from the sea outside. The sea in front of the building is the mouth of the Aji River, where salinity and turbidity swing too much to use, so seawater is trucked in instead, about 350 tons per delivery run.

The tank's famous residents are the whale sharks, and the route lets you watch them from several depths on a single visit. Because the route circles the same water as it descends, you see the tank from above, from the side, and from near the bottom without ever backtracking. The whale sharks are fed at the surface, which has a practical consequence for planning, covered below.

The tank opened with the building on 20 July 1990 and has been the centrepiece since. Everything else in this guide, the ticket tiers, the timed slots, the floor-by-floor route, ultimately arranges your visit around this one body of water and the animals circling inside it.

Kai And Yu

At the aquarium's own measurement on 31 October 2025, two whale sharks lived in the Pacific Ocean tank. The male, Kai, measured 5 m 30 cm, up from 4 m 70 cm a year earlier, with a girth of 2 m 60 cm and a weight of about 1,100 kg; his age was estimated at 8 to 9 and he arrived on 2 October 2024. The female, Yu, measured 6 m 20 cm with a girth of 2 m 70 cm and a weight of about 1,800 kg, with an estimated age of 18 to 19. Those figures are date-scoped for a reason: Kaiyukan rotates individual whale sharks back to the sea, so the pair you may see is the pair as of that measurement, not a permanent cast.

They share the tank with other large residents. Two sand tiger sharks arrived in May 2025, the first time the species has been shown here. An ocean sunfish, a 97 cm male, arrived on 4 July 2025. Between them and the whale sharks, the tank carries several of the animals people come specifically to see.

Where To Stand For The Best View

The one confirmed fact worth using is the feeding behaviour. Whale sharks at Kaiyukan are fed at the surface, and the animal turns vertical to suck in food, per the aquarium. That means the upper floors of the spiral, where you look down onto the top of the water, give the better view of a feeding. If a feeding matters to you, plan to be near the tank early in the descent rather than deep in the lower floors.

For everything else, the descent itself is the point. No single floor is documented as the definitive viewing spot outside of feedings, and the honest advice is that the tank rewards repetition: you will pass it, in effect, several times on the way down.

Rules That Changed In 2026

• From 15 June 2026

  Re-Entry Is Over

  One pass, in and out, on the same ticket.

• In force since 24 April 2026

  Bag Size Limit

  Three sides totalling 120 cm or more, or any side over 70 cm, stays outside.

• In force since 24 April 2026

  Pets In Carriers

  Dogs and cats only, fully enclosed in a carrier up to 50 x 30 x 30 cm.

Kaiyukan tightened its visitor rules over the first half of 2026, and three of the changes matter enough to plan around. All three come from official announcements rather than rumour, and all three can affect a visit that was fine a year ago.

Re-Entry Is Over

From 15 June 2026, re-entry ended. Once you walk out of the aquarium, you cannot come back in on the same ticket. This kills the old habit of popping into Tempozan Marketplace for lunch and returning for the afternoon, or stepping out to the Ferris wheel and finishing the spiral later. Eat before you enter, or after you finish, and plan the visit as one continuous run from Entrance Building 3F to the exit. Combined with timed-entry tickets sold in 15-minute admission slots, each with a capped number of tickets, the effect is a building that manages its flow deliberately: you arrive in a slot, you descend once, you leave.

What You Cannot Carry In

The bag rules, in force since 24 April 2026, are specific. Not allowed inside: suitcases and cart-type luggage, pet carts, anything whose three sides total 120 cm or more or with any single side over 70 cm, umbrellas 120 cm or longer, open drink containers, alcohol, and dangerous items. Anything wider than 85 cm may be refused outright, because some corridors in the building will not take it. If you are arriving from the airport or a hotel checkout with a roller bag, that bag is staying outside.

Pets are permitted but narrowly: dogs and cats only, fully enclosed in a carrier no larger than 50 x 30 x 30 cm. Approved walking aids and strollers are still allowed, so families with small children and visitors with mobility aids are not affected by the luggage rules.

Where Big Bags Go

Oversized bags can be left at your hotel or in coin lockers. The lockers sit at the entrance, at Kaiyukan Hall, near the Museum Shop, in Tempozan Marketplace, and under the Ferris wheel. Tempozan Marketplace is the nearest large cluster, and the wheel is a short walk, but the simplest move is to arrive without the bag at all.

One more warning from the aquarium itself, issued in June 2026: fake ticket sites are targeting overseas visitors. Buy only from the aquarium's official site or authorised sellers.

What The Ticket Does Not Cover

The admission ticket is admission only. Transport to Tempozan, parking, food, and lockers all sit outside it, as do the paid add-ons. One of those add-ons is worth naming: the Jinbei Backyard ticket, which takes you behind the Pacific Ocean tank to see the whale sharks from above the water. It runs on scheduled dates only, is a separate paid extra, and carries no price on this page, so anyone interested needs to check the aquarium's own schedule for the day.

The Osaka Amazing Pass

The Osaka Amazing Pass does not get you into Kaiyukan. The aquarium is on neither the pass's free-admission list of 41 facilities nor its special-offer list of 52 entries, so a pass holder pays Kaiyukan's full gate price like everyone else. The pass itself costs 3,500 yen for one day and 5,000 yen for two, with sales running 25 March 2026 to 31 March 2027. It does cover the Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel next door, whose regular fare is 1,000 yen for ages 3 and over. NIFREL, the sister aquarium in Suita run by the same company, is on the pass's offer list, but the offer is a free can badge rather than money off admission.

The Ferris Wheel Next Door

The Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel, opened 12 July 1997, stands beside the aquarium, but there is no Kaiyukan plus Ferris wheel combo ticket. The wheel's only set ticket is with the Santa Maria cruise. If you want both aquarium and wheel, you buy them separately, and since re-entry ended on 15 June 2026, the wheel belongs after the visit, not in the middle of it.

One thing stands out in the table: none of these set tickets can be booked here. All three are sold at the aquarium's own ticket counter on the day, and only there. The Santa Maria boat, LEGOLAND Discovery Center Osaka, and the Captain Line shuttle each combine with that day's admission price plus a fixed add-on, which is why no fixed total appears anywhere above.

The arithmetic is simple but not a single number. Whatever your date's gate price happens to be, from the demand-based calendar, the add-on sits on top of it: 1,500 yen adult and junior high or 750 yen elementary for Santa Maria, 2,800 yen all tiers for LEGOLAND, rising to 3,000 yen on peak days, and the Captain Line's 900 yen adult and junior high, 500 yen elementary, 400 yen preschool, rising on peak days. Because the base moves with the calendar, the set prices move with it too. Check the day's level before doing the sum, and remember the counter-only conditions, including LEGOLAND's 15:00 same-day cutoff.