Fishing the Seto Inland Sea

I spent my evening gutting the fish that have been in my freezer for a month.

The pink-and-green wrasse is marinating in soysauce and vinegar in my fridge for the night, while the long scary tachiuo (sablefish) is in my belly. There's something exhilarating about catching your food in the wilderness, prepping it with your own knife, and boiling it on your own stove, with your own sake and soysauce and sugar. The rice I ate the fish over was a gift from my 6th graders at Kawamo, planted and harvested from their own paddy behind the school. The tomatos and cucumbers I made a salad out of were a goodbye gift from the second grade teacher at Mitani. A whole local meal, caught or picked by me or my friends, in Yakage or the Seto Inland Sea.

I caught these fish back in early June, when I went out on the Inland Sea from Kasaoka harbor. I was invited by my friend Morikawa-san, the fisherman-librarian from Okayama Public Library who took me fishing for octopus last fall, and his young friend Nakayama-san, to spend the Saturday afternoon fishing on Nakayama's boat. Morikawa-san met Nakayama at a fishing shop where they both buy bait, when the owner introduced them as guys he thought would get along. Ever since, Nakayama's been offering to take out "Morikawa-sensei" (he used to be a middle school teacher) with Nakayama's two young boys, Umi 海　and Kouga 海旅. The kids names mean "Ocean" and "Sea Voyage."





We ended up catching some twenty fish, all species I'd never caught before. I was most excited to catch a bright green-and-pink fish that I recognized as a wrasse, the tropical fish I'd seen once snorkeling with Danny's family in Hawaii; I looked it up on my Wordtank and sure enough, it was a べら "bera". We also caught these freaky long thrashy fish called tachiuo ("sablefish" in french; scabbardfish in English) that are really common in Japanese supermarkets, and a translucent silver fish called "kissu". The guys gave me a bag full to take home with me, but my sister was coming to visit hte next week, so I put them in my freezer and didn't touch them again until tonight, a month later, when I've finished teaching and I've got a solitary weekend in Yakage by myself. The fish were beautiful to catch, fun to dissect, and tasty to eat.

I hope the next fish I catch come from the James River.