ENOSUI CHRISTMAS

ENOSUI CHRISTMAS is the Christmas season at Enoshima Aquarium in Fujisawa, Kanagawa. In the weeks before Christmas the aquarium puts up a tree outside its entrance, shows animals picked for the season, gives its shows a Christmas version and runs a stamp rally and craft workshops, all built around a theme that changes every year.

The 2026 edition: Ribbon

The 2026 theme is the ribbon, chosen as a sign of the ties between people and of the thanks and good wishes that a ribbon on a present carries. The displays look for ribbons of many kinds between the animals and the visitors.

Displays

In front of the entrance stands a tree 7 metres tall, decorated with 300 ribbons modelled on sea creatures and ornaments in Christmas colours, and lit after dark.

The theme tank in the Welcome Lounge holds fish that suggest Christmas: the emperor red snapper with its red and white stripes, the longhorn cowfish, whose horns recall a reindeer's antlers, and the longnose hawkfish.

Next to the big Sagami Bay tank, animals whose shape or pattern looks like a ribbon are gathered together, among them the ribbon eel, the red lionfish, garden eels, the Japanese sea nettle and the mandarinfish. A tank made to look like a pop-up Christmas card holds seahorses and cardinalfish. The seaweeds of Sagami Bay are shown as an underwater Christmas tree, with illustrations of the part they play on the rocky reef, and the Japanese fire-bellied newt is picked out for its red belly with black spots.

By the Jellyfish Science area, electric eels and electric catfish light a Christmas tree, with an explanation of how the two fish make electricity.

The Humboldt penguins are introduced one by one in an advent calendar. At the dolphin stadium, a display shows the leaves, branches and other things that blow into the pool in strong wind and that the dolphins help the keepers collect. Small trees dressed in ribbons stand for the spotted seals, green turtles, bottlenose dolphins and the deep sea. Awatan, the aquarium's mascot, turns five in 2026, and the blue ribbon it wears for the anniversary decorates the tree in its cafe.

Shows

In the Jellyfish Fantasy Hall, a Christmas show brings Santa Claus, falling snow and ribbon ornaments into the room. Fins, the diving show in the Sagami Bay tank where visitors draw fish and ask for underwater shots, has a winter version in which the drawings light up and a large ribbon in the tank changes. Awatan appears in a Christmas costume for photos on Saturdays.

Activities

A stamp rally through the aquarium explains how animals send signals to each other without words and how parents and young keep in touch. At Nagisa no Taiken Gakushukan (なぎさの体験学習館), the beach learning centre on the aquarium's grounds, visitors can make snow globe ornaments on weekdays in December and Christmas wreaths finished with shells at weekends. The December edition of Enosui eco Day, the aquarium's beach clean, is a Christmas special, and the first 100 helpers receive a Santa hat.

The Christmas market

The 2026 edition adds the aquarium's first Christmas market, held for one day in Shonan Omatsuri Hiroba (湘南お祭り広場), the square in front of the entrance. Makers of handmade work about sea creatures and the sea sell their pieces there, and part of the takings goes to the Kanagawa Kaigan Bika Zaidan (かながわ海岸美化財団), a foundation that keeps the Kanagawa coast clean.