While on holiday in Japan, I kept a detailed series of notes in
honour of Nanowrimo. All posts about Japan comprise excerpts from my
journals.
6th November, 2013
"This morning, I said to my mother that we should detox today by eating things that are slightly healthier. She agreed and we ate a super healthy Japanese breakfast with cold boiled vegetables and porridge and fish and then after lunchtime passed, we shared a tiny calzone. Nearer to seven pm, I was getting hungry and trying to decide what to eat next and she looked rather confused and said, "Eat? I thought we were detoxing."
We looked at each other and then it hit me. My ever-loving mother thought we were fasting and had been suffering in silence out of solidarity with me.
Boy, did we laugh hard at that one.
____________________________________
After we eat our breakfast overlooking the Yokohama bay, my mother puts her spoon down and says, "I want to go to Chinatown today."
Chinatown? Come on. Chinatown is everywhere else, I argue, but you can't take the Chinese out of the... well, Chinese person, so Chinatown it is. As consolation, we look at the map and see what looks good in the vicinity of Chinatown. We hit upon the Baby Fish Aquarium at the same time. Obviously, I'm crazy about fish and if there's anyone crazier, it's my mother. She loves her little brick pond and sits there for hours watching the guppies frolic. Baby Fish Aquarium sounds like something too cute to miss - it's either going to be fish that are really tiny, or literally baby fish. I have an image of cheerful little fish fry playing in bubbling plastic tanks, which is a big yes for me, so we head in that direction.
Chinatown is like Chinatowns the world over. Dim sum, roast duck, elaborate dragon gates. It smells like incense and medicine hall herbs and for some reason, every shop sells pandas. People sit and eat noodles street side, nestled up against shops selling phone trinkets and souvenirs.
We stop by a temple, crowded with heady joss sticks and again, I tell the Universe that I am filled with gratitude. Against the backdrop of the sky, the dragons on the roof gleam like jewels.
We get lost several times on the way to the Baby Fish Aquarium and at least one thing is consistent here: how helpful and kind people are. They'll go out of their way to help, looking at our scraggly maps and leaving their posts to walk us down the street to point the right way, occasionally laughing good-naturedly at us once we manage to express ourselves.
We make it to the Baby Fish Aquarium which is located, intriguingly, on the second floor of a building hidden in an alleyway.
When we enter, the man at the counter eyes us strangely. Like everyone we have encountered so far, he is exceedingly polite but seems a little bit curious as he issues our tickets and gives us a map to the aquarium. He also points out a cool quiz that you can play on the sill of each tank - a magnetic pen can be touched to three magnets that symbolise multiple choice answers to a question printed at the top of the tank. The correct answer attracts the pen and the wrong answers repel it. It is so ingenious and simple and, unlike fancy electronics, hard to destroy.
We start walking among a series of small but well-appointed tanks. Right off the bat, I recognise frog fish, fiddler crabs, some kind of pipe fish and garden eels (my favourite!). Gradually my mother and I start to realise something funny, which is that each tank, or each group of tanks, actually has a theme. Unlike other aquariums, which are made to simulate the natural habitats of the animals, the tanks here are made to demonstrate what the fish seem like, if that makes any sense.
The alien, floating pipe fish get a tank that resembles the surface of the moon, complete with a little space shuttle and the tank full of random fish actually gets a fish party. I can't emphasis enough how bizarre and funny it all is. It takes me a second to realise that a tank full of what looked like model houses is actually full of hermit crabs - an interesting way to teach children that hermit crabs literally carry their homes on their backs. Parts of it are rather odd and I'm not sure if the fish mind, or feel mistreated, but my mother and I keep giggling and pointing out crazier and crazier set-ups.
Some of the fish get decor that touts their skills. A school of fast swimming fish gets a swimming pool, the archer fish get their food put on an actual bull's eye and the mudskippers, who have dry platforms from which they can hop into the water, get high jump bars. A sucker fish of some description has walls lined with tiles of different textures so that we can see which one he likes to suck on best.
The poisonous fish are put in tanks that look like they are covered with police cordons. It's all rather entertaining and clearly meant for educational purposes. Even more amusing are the signs about sea creatures with English translations on them, such as the one that states that the octopus has three hearts and labels a drawing of said octopus with "Gills the heart" which, well, I'm not sure what that means.
Some of the signs are oddly poetic, like one about flounders that reads:
The body is hidden.
This fish has transform
eye. From child to old very
aglessibe From child to old.
I feel somewhat moved and I have no idea why.
Thus entertained, we get to what looks like the end of the aquarium and I wait for my mother to use the loo. Suddenly, she comes running round the corner, telling me, "You have to come see this! It's a playgroup!"
Confused, I trail after her into an entirely different wing of the aquarium where we have to take off our shoes. Here, there are still more tanks of really cool fish but for some reason, the tanks are all knee height and we have to kneel to look into them. Beyond that corridor, is, of all things, an indoor playground, and there is a group of chubby little babies playing on the equipment with their parents.
And that's when it hits us. The cutesy tanks and the knee high exhibits all for teaching the very young. The "Baby Fish Aquarium" isn't for small fish (even though they are mostly minute), it's literally for babies. No wonder the man at the counter was so nonplussed. We're in an aquarium for children.
But I don't even care right now because this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. The playground is filled with fish. From a fish tunnel under the slide to tanks on the jungle gym that kids can climb to look at, the entire place is designed for children to get close to animals. I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how simple the idea is. If I'd had access to something like that as a child, I would've been positively filled with delight.
I love what Singapore has done with its animal attractions, but this is a more accessible way to get very young children close to aquatic life than holding them over too-high touch pools that may get them screaming. (Plus their axolotl breeding programme seems to be working!)
As we're walking out of the children's playground, an elderly woman who seems to run the gift shop grabs my mother's arm and says, "Education! Education!"
"A tour?" my mum looks over her shoulder at me, confused. We follow the lady and join a small group of people who are listening to a very enthusiastic woman who patters away in rapid Japanese before showing us... Fish Theatre. I'm not even kidding. The fish have been trained to race down a plastic tunnel, "sing" (READ: eat) round a microphone for the duration of one song and then race back into their tank.
The presenter then stands behind a tank of some of the ugliest stone fish I've ever seen. She proceeds to tell us about the stone fish (I'm guessing) and asks the audience to guess how many stone fish are in the tank. The ladies beside us obediently count; at least ten. The presenter then lowers a stick with a piece of meat on it and shows, with great flair, how if she pokes the stone fish or strokes its back with the meat, it will not move a jot. But move the meat in an arc by the fish's face and... BAM! It pounces.
We all squeal and laugh in shock.
She asks the lady beside me to point out the next fish and repeats the process. We all brace ourselves for the fish to come gulping out of the sand and... nothing. The stone fish is actually a stone. Half the supposed fish creatures in that tank are stones that have been carved and painted for this express purpose. We are deeply amused; this aquarium has a crazy sense of humour.
We wander out of the building feeling very lighthearted. It's the quirkiest thing I've seen in some time and I'm inordinately glad that we've actually come to Chinatown for this."
Chinatown is like Chinatowns the world over. Dim sum, roast duck, elaborate dragon gates. It smells like incense and medicine hall herbs and for some reason, every shop sells pandas. People sit and eat noodles street side, nestled up against shops selling phone trinkets and souvenirs.
We stop by a temple, crowded with heady joss sticks and again, I tell the Universe that I am filled with gratitude. Against the backdrop of the sky, the dragons on the roof gleam like jewels.
We get lost several times on the way to the Baby Fish Aquarium and at least one thing is consistent here: how helpful and kind people are. They'll go out of their way to help, looking at our scraggly maps and leaving their posts to walk us down the street to point the right way, occasionally laughing good-naturedly at us once we manage to express ourselves.
We make it to the Baby Fish Aquarium which is located, intriguingly, on the second floor of a building hidden in an alleyway.
When we enter, the man at the counter eyes us strangely. Like everyone we have encountered so far, he is exceedingly polite but seems a little bit curious as he issues our tickets and gives us a map to the aquarium. He also points out a cool quiz that you can play on the sill of each tank - a magnetic pen can be touched to three magnets that symbolise multiple choice answers to a question printed at the top of the tank. The correct answer attracts the pen and the wrong answers repel it. It is so ingenious and simple and, unlike fancy electronics, hard to destroy.
We start walking among a series of small but well-appointed tanks. Right off the bat, I recognise frog fish, fiddler crabs, some kind of pipe fish and garden eels (my favourite!). Gradually my mother and I start to realise something funny, which is that each tank, or each group of tanks, actually has a theme. Unlike other aquariums, which are made to simulate the natural habitats of the animals, the tanks here are made to demonstrate what the fish seem like, if that makes any sense.
The alien, floating pipe fish get a tank that resembles the surface of the moon, complete with a little space shuttle and the tank full of random fish actually gets a fish party. I can't emphasis enough how bizarre and funny it all is. It takes me a second to realise that a tank full of what looked like model houses is actually full of hermit crabs - an interesting way to teach children that hermit crabs literally carry their homes on their backs. Parts of it are rather odd and I'm not sure if the fish mind, or feel mistreated, but my mother and I keep giggling and pointing out crazier and crazier set-ups.
Some of the fish get decor that touts their skills. A school of fast swimming fish gets a swimming pool, the archer fish get their food put on an actual bull's eye and the mudskippers, who have dry platforms from which they can hop into the water, get high jump bars. A sucker fish of some description has walls lined with tiles of different textures so that we can see which one he likes to suck on best.
The poisonous fish are put in tanks that look like they are covered with police cordons. It's all rather entertaining and clearly meant for educational purposes. Even more amusing are the signs about sea creatures with English translations on them, such as the one that states that the octopus has three hearts and labels a drawing of said octopus with "Gills the heart" which, well, I'm not sure what that means.
Some of the signs are oddly poetic, like one about flounders that reads:
The body is hidden.
This fish has transform
eye. From child to old very
aglessibe From child to old.
I feel somewhat moved and I have no idea why.
Thus entertained, we get to what looks like the end of the aquarium and I wait for my mother to use the loo. Suddenly, she comes running round the corner, telling me, "You have to come see this! It's a playgroup!"
Confused, I trail after her into an entirely different wing of the aquarium where we have to take off our shoes. Here, there are still more tanks of really cool fish but for some reason, the tanks are all knee height and we have to kneel to look into them. Beyond that corridor, is, of all things, an indoor playground, and there is a group of chubby little babies playing on the equipment with their parents.
And that's when it hits us. The cutesy tanks and the knee high exhibits all for teaching the very young. The "Baby Fish Aquarium" isn't for small fish (even though they are mostly minute), it's literally for babies. No wonder the man at the counter was so nonplussed. We're in an aquarium for children.
But I don't even care right now because this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. The playground is filled with fish. From a fish tunnel under the slide to tanks on the jungle gym that kids can climb to look at, the entire place is designed for children to get close to animals. I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how simple the idea is. If I'd had access to something like that as a child, I would've been positively filled with delight.
I love what Singapore has done with its animal attractions, but this is a more accessible way to get very young children close to aquatic life than holding them over too-high touch pools that may get them screaming. (Plus their axolotl breeding programme seems to be working!)
As we're walking out of the children's playground, an elderly woman who seems to run the gift shop grabs my mother's arm and says, "Education! Education!"
"A tour?" my mum looks over her shoulder at me, confused. We follow the lady and join a small group of people who are listening to a very enthusiastic woman who patters away in rapid Japanese before showing us... Fish Theatre. I'm not even kidding. The fish have been trained to race down a plastic tunnel, "sing" (READ: eat) round a microphone for the duration of one song and then race back into their tank.
The presenter then stands behind a tank of some of the ugliest stone fish I've ever seen. She proceeds to tell us about the stone fish (I'm guessing) and asks the audience to guess how many stone fish are in the tank. The ladies beside us obediently count; at least ten. The presenter then lowers a stick with a piece of meat on it and shows, with great flair, how if she pokes the stone fish or strokes its back with the meat, it will not move a jot. But move the meat in an arc by the fish's face and... BAM! It pounces.
We all squeal and laugh in shock.
She asks the lady beside me to point out the next fish and repeats the process. We all brace ourselves for the fish to come gulping out of the sand and... nothing. The stone fish is actually a stone. Half the supposed fish creatures in that tank are stones that have been carved and painted for this express purpose. We are deeply amused; this aquarium has a crazy sense of humour.
We wander out of the building feeling very lighthearted. It's the quirkiest thing I've seen in some time and I'm inordinately glad that we've actually come to Chinatown for this."
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