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The factory and flyover wasteland, some 2km west of Tennoji, is the unlikely location for the city's most stimulating museum, Liberty Osaka (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; Y250). Its longer name is the Osaka Human Rights Museum and it contains remarkable exhibits which tackle Japan's most taboo subjects. There's an excellent English-language leaflet and a portable tape recording to guide you around the displays which include the untouchable caste, the Burakumin, Japan's ethnic minorities and the disabled, the sexist treatment of women, and the effects of pollution, most tragically seen in the exhibition about Minamata disease . The museum is an eight-minute walk south of Ashiharabashi Station on the JR Loop line. To reach the Osaka Bay area, take the JR Loop line to Bentencho Station; on the way you'll pass the UFO-like Osaka Dome , home of the Kintetsu Buffaloes pro-baseball team. From Bentencho Station take the Chuo line subway to Osaka-ko Station (the Chuo line subway will bring you all the way from other parts of the city), and walk north towards the huge ferris wheel beside Tempozan Harbour Village. Inside an exotic butterfly-shaped building, decorated with a giant fish-tank mosaic, is the fabulous Osaka Aquarium (daily 10am-7pm; Y2000), which provides an eye-popping tour around the "Ring of Fire", the seismic and volcanic belt encircling the Pacific Ocean. The aquarium is constructed so that you wind your way down around fourteen elongated tanks, each representing a different aquatic environment, from Antarctica to the Aleutian Islands. The beauty of the design means you can, for example, watch seals basking on the rocks at the top of the tank and see them swimming, torpedo-like, through the lower depths later. The huge central tank represents the Pacific Ocean and is home to a couple of whale sharks and several manta rays, among many other fish. The giant spider crabs, looking like alien invaders from War of the Worlds , provide a fitting climax to far and away Japan's best aquarium. While at Tempozan, check out what's showing at the Suntory Museum (Tues-Sun 10.30am-7pm; Y1000), housed in a striking glass and concrete inverted cone, designed by star local architect Ando Tadao. The museum specializes in twentieth-century graphic art and has a collection of over 10,000 posters. There's also an IMAX movie theatre (Tues-Sun 11am-7pm; Y1000) showing films on a twenty-metre-high screen.
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