The Boat And The Fish

Yesterday was one of those days that is so large and so full, I can hardly believe it can only be 24 hours long and it has taken me 24 hours to process it.

We pulled the boat up with the help of the winch, the huge team of people and a yellow megaphone.

We filmed and photographed and tweeted and filmed some more.
We ate the happy fish, squid and clams, Noriko’s rice balls, which she got up at 5am to make and drank iced tea to celebrate our work and Eight Prosper Circle. I handed out liquorice pipes to the children and flitted about talking to people I had never met before, who came out for us, full of pride and pleasure to take part.

I saw eagles and cranes at the fish market, where live octopus slivered for their lives right out of the crates and the auctioneer delivered the most fantastic mathematical musical torrent in Japanese. Families and friends of all ages in peachy pink and purple and green rubbery overalls, sloshed fish about, ordering them into size and quality, rinsed crates and picked out the weaklings. All so matter of fact, but not to me.

Invited into the home of the man who will pull our boat around to Nagoya port, we drank iced coffee, held his 2 month old granddaughter, watched the fish festival on DVD and were generally bedazzled by his lovely friendly family of 3 generations.  His pretty wife with encrusted acrylic nails like a mermaid surely should have, the men in patterned underwear, sweet crackers on the table for us to help ourselves, and no sense at all that we were intruding or strangers, in any way whatsoever.

A hot spring next to sooth our sunburnt, tired bodies, towels on heads, washing sat on little stools and calm.

Then back to eat the freshly caught fish feast in the local hotel with the man who has given the boat to the project, and as the sun went down it all just blew my mind.

How generous can people be, how close you can feel, why in the world not.