During the Golden Week holiday, my family & I visited Ishigaki Island, in Okinawa prefecture. It was the first time I had been to Okinawa.
Of course I went snorkelling & saw lots of colorful tropical fish. I also saw a stingray [レイ], a big brown moray eel [ウツボ], & a massive white sea cucumber [ﾅﾏｺ]. I have an underwater camera, so I spent a lot of time trying to take photos of fish (but not the moray eel - those things are scary. And not the sea cucumber -they`re kind of disgusting). It was fun, but tiring.
There were also a lot of nice butterflies - I saw at least 15 kinds of butterfly that I`d never seen before. There were also a lot of hermit crabs [yadokari]. They`re pretty funny.
This a tree near a friend`s house. What is interesting about it? Can you guess...?
UPDATE:
Answers are in comments!
Not too far from Waikiki Beach is a place called Hanauma Bay. It`s an excellent place to go snorkelling - you can see all kinds of colourful tropical fish, and coral too. I had a great time taking photos of them with my underwater camera.
The beach is very scenic, isn`t it? So it has appeared in various TV shows and movies, such as `Blue Hawaii` in 1961, featuring Elvis Presley. I`ll look for it next time I`m at the DVD rental store!
I bought my Fuji Finepix XP camera a couple of years ago. I use it as a regular day-to-day camera, but it`s waterproof, so I can also use it underwater. I took the above photo when I went snorkelling at Mihama beach during Obon holidays. As you can see, the water was quite clear, but even when the water is clear, it`s pretty tricky (difficult) to take underwater pictures - the fish move, the water moves, you move, and you have to come up for air all the time! It`s kind of frustrating, but also fun.
On Sunday Teragoya had a daycamp for kids in the mountains of Inuyama. The kids were really interested in finding & catching animals. You can see some of the animals above, in the photos.
The kids had a great time & so did the teachers. It was a fun day, & we were lucky that it didn`t start raining until we were about to leave.
![Medaka News Update]()
Besides things like bbqs, streams, parks & restaurants, Kawashima Water Eco Park also has a building called the `Aqua Restoration Training Center`. Inside, there are displays, videos, books etc. about Japanese rivers and their ecosystems. I found it very interesting.
Anyway, at home I noticed that most of my medaka release eggs, which become babies. However, a few of my fish give birth to LIVING babies. Now I know why! The volunteer a the A.R.T.C. explained that the ones which have eggs are Japanese medaka, but the other ones are from North America. They were introduced to Japan in the 1950`s. The American ones are stronger than the Japanese ones, so in fact, now in Kyushu there are only American `kadayashi` - no Japanese medaka!
Occasionally I release medaka back into the creek near my house, but the volunteer told me not to release the American ones. Haha - I have American prisoners - maybe Rambo will visit me!
Anyway, the above picture, which I found on the internet, shows the difference.
I know fish aren`t trash, but ones like Medaka (`killifish` in English) are free to collect if you want to. I keep some in plastic plant boxes and fish tanks (suiso) at home and in a fish tank in my classroom too. I caught them in a creek near my house.
Usually wild medaka are brown, but occasionally they are white, and last week I caught a rare orange one for the first time. Cool!
Maybe I have an invisible one too, but I`m not sure.
I hope the orange one will have orange babies. Then, when I have lots of orange medaka, I`ll sell them and become rich and buy a 1969 Ford Mustang.
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