April 26 marks the opening of a magical aquarium in Murado City, Kochi Prefecture, Japan.
By this day, the aquarium had been in business for four full years.
In the details of its visit, the opening hours are written as "school hours" and the closing hours are written as "school hours".
Visiting it feels like going to school – its full name is "Muroto City Abandoned School Aquarium". The predecessor of the aquarium was a primary school that was eventually abolished due to insufficient student resources.
And when the school becomes an aquarium, the original unremarkable scenery has produced fantasies and magic that subvert the daily life.
Since it is an aquarium, there must always be a variety of animals, and the "outdoor exhibition area" of the aquarium has become a place for fish to swim.
Originally the pool where children go to school, standing above and looking out, schools of fish can come and go in a large enough pool.
Along the corridor, the atmosphere of the ordinary aquarium comes to the face, and under the lights, all kinds of different small fish are scattered throughout the corridor.
AED cardiac defibrillators, old-fashioned projectors, and jumping tables for physical education classes have all become windows for displaying fish, and there is an inexplicable sense of the end of the world at a glance.
And if you want to go to a specific exhibition area, there will be "enthusiastic people" such as bone specimens to show you the way:
"The Science Preparation Room is currently undergoing a demonstration of skeletal specimens".
Classrooms become homes for shrimp, crabs, conchs, and sea cucumbers, and the blackboard is naturally filled with information about them.
It's a "touchable pool" where all the animals are fished by the season's fishermen, and children can gently touch the animals in the sink and get up close and personal with them.
The museum also carefully preserves the tradition of the Japanese school blackboard, and on the right side is written the information of today's daily students.
However, the names of the children on duty have changed from "sea cucumbers" and "shrimp jun".
Different classrooms play different roles, and in addition to the usual displays, there are various rotating exhibitions and theme activities.
There have been campaigns to resist marine litter before, directly putting garbage such as plastic bags in the display water tank, creating an intuitive feeling that pollution will lead to the disappearance of animals.
Where the specimens are placed, different specimens sit quietly "in" chairs, as if waiting for the next lesson to begin.
Many of the tanks where the animals are placed are water that comes directly from the nearby sea, and there are about 50 kinds of animals on display in the aquarium. More than a thousand "students" were successfully "enrolled" with the help of fishermen.
In addition, some turtles that have strayed into fishing nets also "learn" here, waiting to return to the sea at the right time.
The surrounding area of the aquarium is also super cute, and when you walk into the surrounding shops, the crowded fish dolls are collectively staged to be loveless.
The museum tweeted that when you put the fish doll in the classroom, "Reincarnated Me Became a Primary School Student" was staged on the spot.
The museum is also dedicated to the study of the surrounding sand sculptures, and has previously made slippers that can step on the fish-shaped mark:
Silly Hammerhead Puppets:
Seamlessly dock with the turtle shell of the turtle immortal:
Since it is a "school", many places can still see the detailed settings.
Here, the various guidebooks are called "textbooks"
The place where the curator is located is the "Principal's Office"
The "Night Tour of the Campus" is like returning to campus after the disappearance of humans, experiencing the illusion of marine life occupying the living space of human beings.
As mentioned earlier, before becoming an aquarium, it was a local elementary school, which was closed in 2001 due to the impact of low birth rates and officially abandoned in 2006.
In the year of the suspension, there were only 3 children left in the school.
(Dilapidated teaching building in front of the aquarium)
School abandonment due to the decline in birthrates is not uncommon, and the slow decline in the number of public elementary schools has been accompanied by a sharp decline in the number of children in Japan.
Based on the irreversible tide of school abandonment, Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology launched the "Everyone's School Abolition Plan", which aims to revitalize the 450 abandoned schools that have been added every year and transform them into different facilities to serve the local people.
Some of them have become co-working spaces
Some have been transformed into nostalgic sightseeing experience facilities
Others have been transformed into a comprehensive entertainment facility that integrates roasteries, barbecue shops, high-end restaurants, etc., while retaining some of the elements of the original school and renovating them into a coffee shop with elementary school characteristics.
Amid the wave of abandoned schools, the abandoned school aquarium in Murado City has attracted more and more visitors because of its unique experience.
From full of joy and laughter to slow silence and ruin, the teaching building has witnessed the children step by step into the future, and also witnessed all the bustle return to dust.
Today, schools have become aquariums, and groups of children have returned, as if going back in time, refilling classrooms and schools.
And if we let go of our brains, perhaps in parallel universes, the buildings after the sudden disappearance of humans become the dwellings of animals, and the sense of surreality of emptiness is gathered here.
From this point of view, the abandoned school aquarium may bring you a more mysterious feeling and more interesting fantasies.