Wednesday 28 May 2014

Eging Summit - Tanabe Japan 2014


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.