The Trigger of My Japanese Goldfish Obsession : The Odd Fish on Hikari Gold Packet

The old packaging of Hikari Gold

    I was 11 years old, with a booming passion for goldfish (I started keeping goldfish at 7 years old) and was at the time familiarising myself with the Hikari brand of fish foods. Being an 11 year old, I didn't have much money to buy expensive foods and the Hikari Gold was one of the fish foods that I can afford (after saving for a week).

At first, I didn't pay much attention to the fish being displayed on the packaging and was more interested in reading about the qualities of the food itself (colour enchancers, easily digested, etc etc).
After a while, I became interested in the fishes being displayed on each packaging and tried to guess which variety the fish belongs to.

But I could not guess the odd fish on this particular pink packaging, and initially thought it could be a butterfly ryukin with a fused tail. I began searching on the internet (at the time smartphone wasn't a thing yet) and stumbled upon an article (a very vague one) that centers around a type of goldfish called "curly-tailed goldfish" or "peacock-tailed goldfish".

Upon finding out the name of the fish (which I thought was curly-tailed/peacock tailed goldfish) I began searching all over the internet and didn't find much info on it. In time, I forgot about it and continue my goldfish hobby as usual.  A few months later, while using the same keywords, I found it at last. It was an article that mentions the fish has large flat tail that  resembles the peacock and it also mentioned that this odd fish is called a Tosakin.

And from then on, I have been surfing the net for tosakins....I read every blog or website, and watched every single youtube video related to tosakins (although I can found quite an amount of videos, there were not much websites about it).

In the link below, you can find the very first tosakin video I watched (I was 12 at the time). I was pretty amazed by the structure of the tail, how unique it was that sets it apart from all the other goldfish I've known. The tail flips are of course the highlight of this variety and it lead me to the other tosakin videos.

https://youtu.be/q_xDAH6lXE0
The video by bunkker50

In time, one thing lead to another and I became fully obsessed with tosakins for quite some time (while still keeping other types of goldfish) and those videos/websites on tosakins had lead me to the other 3 Japanese goldfish which are the Ranchu (TVR), the Jikin and the Nankin.

Did I succeeded in getting my hands on some tosakins? Well...that's another story....and will be told in another post.

Regards,
tosakin_fancier