Kids Web Japan

Mr. Hamabe prepares fish with a practiced hand.

Freshly caught fish being made into sashimi for eating raw.

Ready to eat at last! All the fish dishes look delicious.

First-year student Tomomi Hamabe and Mami, her sister in the second-year, have returned to their home, a few minutes walk from the wharf. Their father is going to prepare the fish that they have brought home.

The Hamabe family has been involved in commercial fishing for generations, and Mr. Hamabe became a fisherman soon after he graduated middle school. For about 30 years since then, he has continued to fish with a pole and line (catching one fish at a time) and with a gill net (a net that is placed vertically in the water and catches fish when they try to swim through it). Mrs. Hamabe says of her husband, laughing, "He's always taken care of the fish, so all I have to do is set the table!" Today Mr. Hamabe is making horse mackerel and squid sashimi, squid curry, boiled barracuda, and boiled cuttlefish and squid. "This is a normal meal," says Mr. Hamabe, adding, "Depending on the season, we sometimes have lobster or rice with abalone and turbo cooked in." Fresh fish are found at dinner tables every day in Nushima.

"Your dad's cooking tastes good, doesn't it?"