Rokkasho Salmon Festival

Although it’s fall around here, festivals don’t stop. They do change their format when it’s not so warm any more. Not many parades, more food booths, exhibits, competitions, more food booths…with the regular Japanese festival food that seemed so not usual to us a couple of year ago.

Alex loves these Tokoyaki—octopus dumpling balls

Last weekend, we drove about 40 minutes north of base to the town (village) of Rokkasho. It’s located right on the Northwest coast and is famous for its nuclear plant and Rocca Pocca onsen (we still need to make a trip out there one of these days). Every year in October, they hold a Salmon Festival. People can come and attempt to catch a salmon with their bare hand. You get the freshest salmon you can get!

So this year, we got a ticket, and it was decided by (mostly) Robert that I should be the one to catch the fish this year since he already did something like that in Oirase town last year with kids.

This is the pool where we all step into to catch salmon.  We had 5 minutes to catch it, although someone later told me that they had only 3 minutes.

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I am all happy before the catch begins I better catch that salmon, or my $20 I paid for the ticket is going to be fore nothing! **Actually, I think they would come and help me catch a fish if when the time was up I still didn’t have anything.

As soon as the “giant voice” said GO, this is what the pool looked like.

Do you see how deep the water is? Yeah…why did I even bother with wearing my rubber boots. At the beginning, I was wearing rubber gloves…with grooves…to help me catch that stinking fish. Didn’t help. I tried…

…and I tried…

…..and I tried again…

This is where I screamed where I looked up at the kids and Robert said that I cannot believe I am getting so wet with this nasty water and that I still don’t have a salmon! I took off my gloves.

I do wish I had some sort of gloves for my hands because the fish was slippery and gross! Here is a picture of me holding one of the fish by its tail. But it got away….That happened THREE TIMES!

Finally!!! This heavy salmon did not get away. This was probably at a 4 minute park, seriously. Salmon was very tired by that time, so it was slower and I was determined to hold on to that yucky tail.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any pictures of me and my new friend, Salmon. Oh well! Everyone was too excited that we all forgot. I was soaked completely, smelling like salty fish water. Nevertheless, this was super fun! I would do it again, and this time I would have a very successful strategy-hehehe.  I recommend this activity to everyone!

Now, I’ve got to decide when to cook the other half of our salmon that’s in the freezer

Have a great day!