Its always a big day travelling to Japan from Melbourne, as
the airline travel with transits via Cairns the day is slightly stretched out
with a few hours sitting in Cairns. I left home with my kind wife waking at
0300 for the 0600 flight. One bonus is there is very little traffic on the
roads at that time of the day.
All checked in we made the trip to Cairns. Now I must say,
if the walk from domestic to international was not such a journey Cairns
airport would be a pretty cool place but having to lug your bags and gear all
the way to the international departures area is a pain. Quick jaunt through
immigration and customs and the wait begins.
Now being a fat bastard I choose to fly business class just
for the extra room and I must say the service the staff at Jetstar
International give is second to none and being able to get a sleep without
being wedged into a tiny little seat makes the arrival much better when you are
fresh and well rested. It was just as well I got my beauty sleep as upon my
exit from customs a Japanese TV crew pulled me up paparazzi style for an
interview. Quite shocked but very humbled at the same time, I am just an
unemployed fisho from Australia but the TV guys were keen to get an interview
and ask about fishing and the eging summit.
After a long awaited coffee we made the trip to Tanabe, the
home of Gan Craft. It was now 2130 in the evening and I expected the staff to
be all at home in bed asleep but they were kind enough to hang around and wait
for me to arrive so we could all go to my fave restaurant for a feed Suyraku
where generous hosts Akio and Mika Ogawa always make me feel at home both in
terms of the food and hospitality. By now I was fairly shagged so a short drive
to the Garden Hotel Hanoya in Tanabe. This is the hotel I always stay at here,
cool staff and best of all shower is awesome.
Up until now there is no English been spoken as Kotaro who
generally translates everything was still away in the Maldives working on his
sun tan and catching GT’s. I thought it would have been more uncomfortable but
it was all good, testing but all good.
Day 1 I had an awesome sleep in not being picked up until
1100, we went back to the office to wrap a few things up where Kumi was kind
enough to who around the corner and pick up some shu cream’s for me, oh how I
have longed for the custard filled treat’s since my last trip, I will miss
these the most when I return home. We made a short stop to a convenience store
so I could pick up a few cans of Red Bull and cans of coffee for the next day
and picked up 5 packets of smokes while I was there. $27AU and I was done for 4
cans of drink and 5 packs of smokes. While at the service station we ran into
Sumizoku Harimitzu/magbite boss.
Was decided that we should go down to the local drain and
throw a few lures around for some Chinu – Chinu or Kuradai are the same as our
Black Bream, they are in massive numbers and big in size but more spooky that
our Black Bream at home. Upon arrival we all stuck our heaps over the concrete
wall to find hundreds of Chinu stacked up just free swimming around. We got
some rods out of the car. I grabbed a Gan Craft Killers Melt teamed up with a
Luvius 2004 and started flicking some Gan Craft Big Spider Micro’s around drop
shotted to keep the natural flow of the spider without sinking to the bottom.
They were very spooky so tempting them in to taking a lure was not a speedy
concept. At last I managed to convince one to grab a lure. It was a big tired
old blue nose that still had a fair whack of fight in him. No measure on hand
so guestimated size was about 45cm.
Time for more food, with the amount of food that these
people scoff down I am surprised they are all not the size of me. We made our
way down to a well known Japanese BBQ restaurant in tanabe where many staff and
family of Gan Craft joined us. For those who are not aware of this style of
eating house you are seated at a table with a built in grill, plates of meat
are delivered to the table and cooked to your liking. Taste and experience
awesome to say the least. We did not stay out too late as the next day the
Eging Summit started and there was much to do so back to the hotel for a
snooze.
