Nothing fishy about this photo at all.

With all the traffic going through them, airports understandably aren’t usually famous for their cleanliness. Even in Japan, which is generally considered the Howard Hughes of nation states, a cookie dropped in an airport wouldn’t even be admitted under the auspices of the two-second rule, never mind the five-second rule.

And yet, here at Amami Airport on Amami Island between Kyushu and Okinawa, things are so spick-and-span that fish can freely hover among the travelers as illustrated in the tweet below.

Before reading the caption, you might suspect this to be a slap-dash bit of photo doctoring, but far from it. This image is one hundred percent authentic.

It is actually taken through an aquarium installed in the airport. The glass and water of the fish tank are so clean that you can hardly see them at all in the photo. Here is another shot taken by a Twitter user with the handle @futabaclover.

▼ “I took a lot of them but this one is my favorite that looks like a bad Photoshop. I was shooting while sliding along with the fish, and looking like a crazy person. lol”

Both the photography skills of @futabaclover and the scrubbing skills of the Amami Island cleaners have earned about 23,000 likes and the following comments.

“Nice picture!”
“When I go to Amami Airport I love to see the fish tanks. I’ll take pictures next time.”
“That’s so clear it might be dangerous!”
“That’s like how they made sci-fi movies in the 60s.”
“That’s making me hungry.”
“It’s a flying fish!”

So, in the end we can all rest assured that in Japan there are no giant fish waiting to catch flights at airports, just as there are no giant salamanders walking through the park or giant hornets outside our bedroom windows.

Source: Twitter/@futabaclover