Dal makhani and matar paneer, to bring back memories of dinnertime on the banks of the Ganges in Uttrakhand.  To think I was only there but two months ago!  Sat at my desk at work in front of the computer, I couldn’t resist putting my spoon down and eating a little with my hands; surreptitiously, as my Japanese colleagues would be shocked at the sight of something so barbaric.  Whenever the subject of eating with one’s hands comes up, I always echo the words of Mughal Emperor Shahjehan (or it may have been the old soak Jehangir): “Eating with cutlery is like wooing a woman through an interpreter.”  Whilst it always seems so hedonistic – mostly making me recall Frankie Howerd’s Up Pompeii – the food really does taste different when eaten with one’s fingers.  On the campsite in India, we would obligingly hold out the jug of water for each other to wash our hands before and after each meal, a most civilised yet intimate ritual.  Whilst you probably won’t get that in your local Indian restaurant, an after-dinner fingerbowl with a slice of lime in it – to refresh one’s lips – always brings back memories of eating tandoori chicken by the campfire to a background of nightjars and the rushing waters of the Ganges, and my daily mealtime attempts at learning Hindi, butchering the language to the indulgent smiles of my dining companion.  Here in Japan, sushi is one of the few Japanese foods that traditionally should be eaten with one’s hands, and it always seems so much tastier to me that way, and it seems a shame when the beautifully crafted sushi falls apart in the soy sauce dish after being clumsily handled with chopsticks. 

It was a wonderful Autumn’s day out, with a background of golden rice ready to be harvested and the air thick with dragonflies of all colours.  After no success at the first spot, we tried another, an impossibly small drainage ditch, but I snagged a mabuna with my first cast.

I got another two hits in rapid succession, with the fish getting away both times, and it promised to be an interesting hour or so until a tractor suddenly appeared and the driver, apologising profusely, said today was the day to mow the banks clear.  We headed off to another spot, a lakeside area, and was slightly alarmed when my companion declared, “The perverts!  The sick perverts!” but it turned out, only that another group of anglers had already started fishing the point we were headed to, and their perversion appeared to be no more than that they had got there before us.  So we headed off to one of my teacher’s secret spots – where he informed me in a conspiratorial tone that we were only there because of me, and he wanted me to have a good catch – and there wasn’t a soul in sight.  Here there was good fishing all round, and I caught plenty of mabuna, as well as some native minnows and a couple of crayfish.

This time of the year the mabuna are generally this size; Springtime is when the beasts can be taken in the shallows.  I was planning on keeping a bunch to make into the dish kanroni, but in person they seemed far too cute to me and I abandoned my culinary enterprise.  Still, on the ultra-light traditional bamboo tackle the game is pretty amusing and they put up a surprising fight.  This one looked to me more like a young hera:

This is a type of minnow called moroko in Japanese; according to my teacher, who is a chef, these are far tastier than mabuna, hera or tanago.  I took his word for it and let the creature go.

The whole area is devoted to rice cultivation and criss-crossed with irrigation channels; part of the fun of the fishing is walking along the banks looking for likely spots that hold fish.  There are many waterbirds about and the undergrowth teams with all manner of insect life and creatures.  In a quiet spot I tested the macro function on my camera:

The paddies – at this time of the year now drained, and either harvested or with the rice golden and waiting to be taken – seem to go on forever, and the hustle and bustle of Tokyo is rapidly forgotten, and all the walking quite meditative.

The wind really picked up after lunch, so we called it a day and headed home after a very satisfying day out.  Being strictly catch and release fishing, we stopped off at a friendly store selling local agricultural produce and I bought some specialties of Chiba: persimmon and peanuts, which were very reasonable.

The ‘dome ships’ (doumu-sen) on Sagamiko; a seafaring man would cringe at the name, as they are really just moored rafts with huts built on top.  With an oil heater inside – where you can boil a kettle - and Western-style toilets without, they are very well-equipped for a relaxed day’s fishing.  The manager ferries you across in a small panga and you are free to come and go, such as for lunch or shopping, with just a phone call.

View of Samagiko itself:

After stuffing myself with tenpura, the leftover wakasagi were wind-dried overnight and stowed in the fridge:

For breakfast, I skewered a few of the fish and grilled them; they were quite good.

やっぱり釣りもので作ったものは美味しい。いいつまみになりました。

Not quite (that particular honour falls to tanago, I imagine) but these fish are tiny: wakasagi.  Taken on Sagamiko yesterday.

Despite being set upon by the office cats and having to bribe them with some of my catch, the bag was good:

Many thanks to Tenguiwa, of Fujino.

Finished in exactly two weeks; I will test them on Sagamiko tomorrow..

These two are designed to be fitted with ready-made fibreglass tips:

I wrapped the pegs with 20 metres of nylon line each, and the rods are now ready for use!  My third rod – which you can see the end of in the top of the photo above – will be 100% bamboo and requires a lot more work before it is ready.

Last night I put on a layer of special red-brown lacquer and the rods went into the box.  When I rose this morning, it was with some trepidation I lifted the lid to check.  Well, it wasn’t a disaster (as has been the case in the past, at my teacher’s workshop) and although the lacquer didn’t quite come out 100% how I wanted, generally the colouration is very rich, and with none of the dreaded specks of dust – the enemy of lacquer – that so ruins the finish.

The joints need to be sanded and re-lacquered maybe once more, then I can wrap the line pegs on and the rods are basically finished!  Ready for my trip for wakasagi fishing next week, definitely.

NB: the rod at the front is not lacquered with the special stuff, which still just has the undercoat on.

to look like fishing rods after three layers of lacquer…apart from their ridiculously small size of course…

I finally got round to wrapping the other two rods, and set to lacquering them.

Then I made the trip to Ueno, to the specialist lacquer shop Watanabe Shoten. 

I got everything ready for my first attempt at lacquering at home, and put on the first layer of lacquer on the rods.