All hot and bothered this summer? You could do worse than visiting Kori no Suizokukan, where hundreds of fish look like they're swimming through solid ice.
Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
The Kori no Suizokukan (Ice Aquarium) in Kesennuma, northeastern Japan, packs about 450 specimens of marine life frozen in large columns of ice bathed in blue light.
The Ice Aquarium uses flash-freezing technology to preserve fresh fish unloaded in Kesennuma's port on the Pacific Ocean. Inside, the ambient air is a cool minus 5 degrees F (minus 20 C), and guests have to don parkas to keep warm. The difference between the temperature inside and outside the aquarium can sometimes top 50 degrees Celsius.
Some 80 species, including saury, octopuses, crabs and skipjack, are preserved in lifelike poses. The fish and other creatures of the deep seem to be swimming in ice.
Okamoto Seihyo, a manufacturing company in Kesennuma, northeastern Japan, helped produce the Ice Aquarium displays. It specializes in what it calls "ice art." Its craftsmen can freeze everything from salmon to bottles of sake to flower arrangements. These are all presented in cylinders of ice that are given as gifts.
