Going fishing

In Belgium people are used to getting quite a few days off throughout the year due to our Catholic legacy, and it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Japan has an equal amount of religious/cultural holidays :-). On Bunka no Hi or 'Culture Day' (Nov 3) we were invited to join a teacher's fishing trip to the coastal area around Fukuoka. Fishing to me means dangling a line in a river, but this group was more ambitious and got a boat, a huge net and even some real fishermen! Our task was to drag the net onto the beach and then later on feast on the poor fish that were deemed attractive enough to be eaten. It's a hard job...

The fishing net way out at sea Working hard to drag it onto the beach

One of the delights of the day was witnessing how the little kids were dealing with the fish. Some were obviously budding animal activists and worked incessantly to throw the poor creatures back into the sea, while others were so fascinated they held the fish for ages - until they died due to lack of oxygen (to be fair, many of the little ones were dead already as they were left out on the beach for way too long) ...

Growing up in Hawaii and being a biology-major, Kylie could tell us a lot about all the different kinds of fish. If you click on this photo you can see more clearly he's holding a really cool blowfish in his right hand (we were ofcourse environmentally friendly and released it back in the water afterwards)!

Not a bad spot for lunch :-)

Japanese-style bbq filled with the most delicious seafood and more beef, chicken and vegetables you could ever eat (we kept going for 1,5 hours and there were still leftovers!). It was such a beautiful day that on arrival back in Fukuoka we decided to go to Momochi beach close to our flat. November in Kyushu: heavenly!

Vaughan and Mike chilling on the beach