December 2007 / January 2008
Oh I dunno! Sometime then.
While Mum was here we went to a strange shopping mall over in Odaiba where one floor was set out like an old Chinese market. Yes, I know we're in Japan, but hey! Anything goes here!!
While Mum and I wandered around the stalls, Rhiannon stayed with Tim. She always does this because she knows that if she wants anything, he will buy it for her. I say no – and mean it. He says no for a while, and then gives in. They found a quaint game where you can scoop for goldfish… by the time Mum and I had found them, Rhiannon had already got going. <Insert expletives here as required> Just what we need - fish - and nowhere to put them.
This is the game: hundreds of small goldfish swim around in a shallow bath. The game is to scoop as many as possible out using a flat scoop made from rice paper. Rice paper, as I'm sure you are aware, dissolves very quickly.
However, Rhiannon was soon the extremely proud owner of 5 tiny goldfish in a plastic bag.
That rather cut short our day-out as we now had to rush home and find them somewhere to live.
In the car on the way home the bag started to leak. Of course.
Back home the only thing I could do was bung the poor things into a basin of ordinary tap water and hope for the best. Then we shot off to a place called D2 which is like a garden centre. And on our last visit we noticed they had fish tanks.
We got a small fish tank, some food and all the gubbins to go with it and returned home to find one of the fish had already gone belly up.
Oh joy.
(and no, they didn't look as good as this!)
