Fat Fish = Stuck Fish

King Kong got himself into a bit of a pickle the other day... he'd managed to swim into the little stone tunnel tank ornament and got himself stuck. So there he was frantically swimming to free himself when Greg happened to notice that we were one fish down and then finally saw his little head poking out the back end of the tunnel along with one front fin sticking out and waving about. On inspection, he'd managed to get his head out one end of the tunnel along with one fin which he was waggling about, but the rest of him was wider than the tunnel exit and he had swum so hard to try and push through the tunnel he had wedged himself in the narrow end. Godzilla seemed rather concerned and actually swam up to end of the tunnel where King Kongs head was to watch helplessly (i like to think he was trying to console him). Anyway after trying to unsucessfully free him without directly touching him failed, Greg resorted to pushing him out backwards using his thumb to push on King Kongs head.

So he's free now, and seems ok. We did rearrange the tunnel thing so that they can't get stuck in it anymore by turning it on its end and stuffing stones in it, so it shouldn't happen again.

The whole incident does show that the fishes are still growing :)

Fruit is my friend

Mr. Fugu

Amikan*

a mikan [蜜柑, みかん] is apparently a satsuma, a sweet and seedless mandarin. I guess they were called satsumas because they were introduced to the West from Satsuma [薩摩], Kagoshima [鹿児島], Japan.

New Year, New Tank, New Fish.

After a long and hard ten days, our fishy was tired and looking a little stressed (that and his water was getting dirty after only one day as opposed to one week resulting in him swimming in a tank of filth for a the last few days). So we decided that it was time for him to get a tank. An actual tank with a filter and more pebbles, as opposed to the plastic bread box he had been living in.

We also got him a friend (a comet) which led to an additional problem of naming the fishes. If you only have one fish, it's quite easy to call it fishy. But with two fishes? fishy-one and fishy-two? nah... it just wont do. So, they now have names that will result in great conversations (see the photo below).

HypnoDANCE!!!! the video.

Okay I should really work out how to edit videos. anyone have any suggestions? I would love to have his little dance put to some music. or a commentary. I guess you should mute the sound on this video too, otherwise you just get the sounds of Greg playing mario kart...



That is Mr. Fish performing hypnoDANCE. We won him/her/it (well YOU try sexing a goldfish!) at a local matsuri (festival) in Tokyo. He likes to dance his little hypnotic dance in the hope that we will feed him till he explodes.

monsieur fishy!

He's still alive and swimming around his tank in a manic manner - we think he is trying to hypnotise us to feed him more. We call it HYPNO-DANCE!!!!!

...and then there was one :(

A mere two days after we got them, one of our little fishies past away. I thought it was the crazy one which was speeding up and down the tank. I woke up the other morning and spotted one little golden fish floating at the top of the tank, with one of it's eyes pointing upwards. It was very sad. But, it would appear that the crazy one is still with us, and is still swimming manically around his tank. The other weekend we heard some odd splashing sounds from his little tank, which turned out to be him jumping up on top of the seaweed.

The morning after we got the fishes, I went out and invested in a vase-shaped thing that they could swim through (or hide in) and some seaweed for them to feel happier. The pet shop also had some little red bridges and tori to furnish aquariums with which I was SOooo tempted to buy - but were far too big and would have resulted in very very little space for the fishies...the orange blur is our fish - at high speed.

He spends most of his time being very energetic and doing acrobatic fishy tricks, and very little time going anywhere near the vase-shaped tunnel ornament that I bought for him.

Gold fishes [金魚]

After seeing all the kids try fishing at the stall near the temple, I thought I would give it a go. 'can't be that hard' I thought...I was terribly wrong. The little paddle that you are equipped with has a surface made of paper, which is carefully designed to disintegrate in water, thus giving you a limited number of tries to get said fish from the pool in to your 'prize' bowl.

With my first dip, the paddle was broken...I guess because I was chasing the fish a bit too enthusiastically - they swim quite fast, dammit. Anyway, after 3seconds the fishing device as useless... so I gave up, and claimed my two consolation gold fish.

fishes!!!

They are now living in a little tub I bought from the 100yen shop, with some pebbles we collected from Brittany. They went nuts when I first put them in. I didn't realise that you had to wait for the tap water to be warm before putting the poor little things in. But they seem much more settled now. So we have fishes.

The upside down fish

My aunt has 3 fish tanks... with various fish in them...but there is one fish which I find fascinating: and that is the 'upside-down fish'.

Normal fish

The 'upside-down fish'

At first I thought he was dead. He/she/it was lying motionless at the bottom of the tank (strange), belly-up (can't be good). But then it twitched....flapping it's little fins...as if to say hello. So, everytime I came back from somewhere I'd have a look in on the upside-down fish. He sometimes moves himself around the bottom of the tank and one day I actually saw him make a break for the top....which was weird to watch, as he swam, upside-down, in a flurry of activity to get to the top and then quickly sank back down again. From time to time the other fishes in the tank say hello to him... I came back one time, to most of the fish huddling around him.