The Fishing Hole

In a past post I said I would talk about the underground koi fishing bananza Scott and I happened to stumble upon so here goes. When Scott and I were trying to find the restaurant our friends were at we ended up walking all over Dotounbori, the huge food district in Osaka, for a good 45 minutes due to the inebriated directions we kept getting from our friend. So during our wanderings we happened to pass by an arcade which had what looked like a big hot tub looking thing down some stairs with a bunch of Japanese clustered around it wearing what seemed to be big leather aprons. We were intrigued enough by this, but there was also a huge koi, or Japanese goldfish, hanging over the entrance beckoning us in. So we wander down the stairs and discover about 15 Japanese men wearing these gigantic aprons fishing for koi with about 2 foot fishing poles. Now mind you koi are basically enormous goldfish so they seemed content to lazily swim around just nudging the hooks being thrown at them. Needless to say at this point Scott and I are struggling between hilarity and disbelief as we are watching these dignified Japanese salarymen fishing for these mutant goldfish in basically a kiddie pool. Oh and when I asked one of them what they did with the fish if they caught one he told me there were prizes based upon the size of the fish, so basically like a Chuckee Cheezes for grown men. Needless to say Japan continues to amaze me on a daily basis as you never know what you are going to find each time you leave the apartment. Oh and I still miss a certain blondie :)