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Eric Marlow Nate Peter RSS Kasen Kankyo Rakuen, Gifu We decided to take our son somewhere where he could run freely. Not too far away from Nagoya is a place called Kasen Kankyo Rakuen which is a fresh water aquarium. We just spent the day running around the attached park, which is quite extensive but right inside the game center was a little sectioned off area that seemed interesting. It was called Dr. Fish and a tank of fish eat the dirt and dead skin off your feet as you sit there and dangle them into a fairly shallow tank. I had seen this on a travel show in Japan about Korea. If I am correct Korea is where this phenomena began a few years ago and became quite popular. It doesn't take popular things long to make their way into the back-country of Japan, so here we were with the opportunity to try it for 500 yen (10 minutes) It's hard to stick your feet in at first because as you put your feet close to the surface of the water they swarm underneath. I think there is a natural hesitancy so stick body parts into swirling live animals. Initially it feels just like you have stuck your feet into a jet pool or something that blows bubbles. This is the fish hunting around for position, then the feeling settles down and you can feel a gentle scraping of your feet. At one point in the first video you can see me flinch as one actually feels like a tiny bite. Not even close to being enough to break the skin, but a pinch that lets you know that there are live animals currently eating you. I had quite thick callouses on the bottom of my feet from Judo, which are now quite shorn down. Only later in the evening did I realize that this may have been a mistake. Soft pretty feet and Judo don't mix. For now, you can see the fresh pink skin and for about 20 minutes this evening my foot started to itch, but otherwise, no harm done. What I did want to do was shave my head and stick that in and see how long I would last. Draw your own conclusions from that. add comment