Whoa, who was that unmasked man?

Saturday morning TV is odd here in Japan, and this is one of the odder inhabitants.

He wears a plush hat - that looks like a fish. Yellow lips, bulby eyes, yellow sides and blue top, dots, and flippers and a tail. The man wears a white lab coat, and overacts outrageously  - jumping around and talking loudly with a skreetching voice. But the junior high school students that he is showing around an aquarium, seaside, and then talking in their school seem fascinated. Sakana-kun (fishboy) is intent on teaching the students to appreciate fish, one way or another.

At one point, he has them sketching the fish that they have seen in the aquarium. The kids are all wearing fish drawings that they've cut out and fastened to headbands.  And we look at one boy's sketch, a tiny flat fish in one corner of the page - and Sakana-kun says, well, maybe you could try something like this, and does a fast, big sketch of a fish. Rounded, bulging eyes, flippers, shading - in a flash, there's a fish swimming out of the page in front of us. And you can see the boy, and the rest of the class, responding to this casual display of artistic talent. Then he gets another boy up in front of everyone, and has him show them his rendition of a ray undulating across the page, and they all cheer for his drawing. You can almost see the boy glow.

And then Sakana-kun leads them across a bridge, doing a strut, pumping his fist, with that odd hat and the lab coat flapping, and they're all cheering the fish.

He makes me want to visit the aquarium and look at the fish! Very, very cool.