Destinations: Japan - Traveling and tenkara fly-fishing in Japan

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA rods, lines, and flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Hello Tenkara anglers, thanks for joining us on the Tenkara Cast. Today we're going to be talking about Japan. Tenkara, as you know, comes from Japan and we've been trying to introduce the concept of Tenkara over here, sharing the Tenkara stories. So I figured I'll do an episode about Japan, traveling to Japan, my experiences fishing in the country.

1:02We'll also be covering the trout of Japan, which are really absolutely fascinating. We'll try to give you some cultural tips, information on how to get around, as well as a little pronunciation guide for those of you who always wonder how to pronounce certain words in Japanese. Hopefully this episode is going to be interesting to anyone who is going to be visiting Japan anytime soon, either for travel or just for travel's sake or for business or anything like that. A little bit about my experiences with traveling to Japan. I have been visiting Japan every year since 2008. My wife, Margaret, has some relatives in a couple of different parts of the country, in Osaka as well as Yamagata, a little further north. And back in 2007, we started talking about visiting some of her relatives. I've always wanted to travel to Japan.

2:04And of course, when she started bringing up, let's go travel, one of the first things that came to mind was like, yes, I'd really like to go there and I'd love to do some fly fishing. So I told her, you can spend all your time with your grandparents, but I really want to do some fly fishing. And I started researching opportunities to fly fish in Japan. And that's when I came across Tenkara. So in 2008, it was around August and September, Margaret and I filled up our backpacks. And we backpacked around Japan for a little over two weeks. We stopped to visit her relatives. but we also got to travel to a lot of different cities. We visited some friends in Tokyo and that kind of thing. So that was my very first experience traveling to Japan with her. Ever since, I've gone back every year, and my trips usually range from anywhere from two weeks up to two months. My longest trip so far was in 2011, when I spent two months in a small mountain village of Mazegawa, in the Gifu prefecture in Japan. And that was the year after I spent some time fishing with Dr.

3:19Ishigaki. And I knew I had to go back there because I had met some other tenkara anglers, and I really wanted to immerse myself. I wanted to learn everything I could about this method of fishing. So I contacted one of the people that I met, Mr. Rocky Osaki, and I asked him, can you help me figure out a place to stay do you have any suggestions for you know where I could go if I want to spend a little bit more time in Japan than most people so he very kindly opened his home him and his wife Ikumi opened his home to me their home to me and I stayed with them for two months I spent time at the Mazegawa Fishing Center helping out where I could but on a regular basis just fishing on the Mazze River. In any case so that was my longest trip back in 2011 and 2012, 13, 14 I've gone back for two to three weeks on average and then I'm planning my next year's trip which I'm hoping to spend a little over a month this time capturing more photography and videos with different people in Japan. So that's my experience right there and I think I've learned a thing or two in these travels that I hope to share with you.

4:46So Japan is a very interesting country. First of all I should get something out of the way. I don't really recommend visiting Japan solely for the purpose of fishing. I think fishing should be a side activity for most people visiting Japan. I might be a little bit of an exception because this is what I love to do. I love sharing their story. But for the most part, if you are wanting to go to Japan and catch some of their native trout, and I'll talk about the trout in this episode as well, think of it as a cultural and a leisurely experience where you're going to enjoy some of the best food in the planet absolutely stunning scenery and you're going to get to learn a lot and see how a very different culture exists and how things are done differently there so again fishing in Japan I'll talk a little bit more about the fishing conditions there I don't recommend booking your trip today just to fish however I do encourage anybody who is interested to go there to Japan by all means. It's been really interesting for me to notice too that ever since I started introducing Tenkara here, several people have gone to Japan out to learn from some of my teachers and meet with people there. Like Adam Tran, for example, from tenkara-fisher.com. He runs a forum and he planned his trip. He actually made a really nice record on his forum about his travel planning and how he went about traveling to Japan to fish and experience the culture and meet up with other Tenkara anglers. So it's been really fascinating to watch more and more people going there, getting to fish those waters, and getting to experience Japan and Tenkara in Japan, of course.

6:44So let's start by talking about the trout of Japan. A lot of people are always surprised when to mention that Japan does have their own native trout and as trout anglers a lot of us really love seeing the native trout of different parts of the country or the world you know every trout has their own beautiful markings there's a lot of variation between different kinds of trout when you catch a brown trout it's got all this you know usually bigger spots and then you have the rainbows which are shinier and like little spots and the cutthroat have this beautiful little mark on their cut on their on their throats and then within each one of those there's always variations as well like for example the rainbow trout you might have the red band mcleod trout for example and so forth and japan has their own trout and that's one of the reasons i wanted to fly fish in japan when i first started considering traveling there um i love i think one of the things that I love about fly fishing is there's something there underneath the water and you cast a fly and all of a sudden you're able to see it you pull it back to you and you bring it to hand or your to your gnat and you're able to see this beautiful thing that otherwise would have been hidden from view forever so catching trout bringing them to hand and kind of just admiring the markings on the trout is fascinating to me. Now, Japan has three major mountain stream fish that we're usually catching with Tenkara. Two of them are trout and one of them is a char. I mean, it's a very similar looking fish with some technical differences that I won't get into on this episode. But the two major trout of Japan are the Yamame and the Amago. Now, Yamame is an interesting word because yama means mountain and then me and like in the way that it's written in this word means lady so essentially lady of the mountains and then you have the amago and the name amago comes from the roots in japanese ame which means rain and then go which is comes from actually, which means child. So the amago is the rain child. And somebody, I think it was, yeah, I think it was Mr. Eddie Yamakawa told me once that the amago maybe are one of those fish that are well known to, when it starts raining, they start getting a little bit more active in biting the fly. That's, you know, I'm not sure if that's exactly the case, but that's the origin of the name. So you have the Yamame, which is Lady of the Mountains, and then you have the Amago, the child, the rain child. Those two fish are very, very similar. They're a little bit more like the rainbow trout that a lot of you are going to be familiar with. A lot of the Amago and the Yamame tend to retain their par marks, those big oval, usually dark marks on the side of the bodies longer than the rainbows I've noticed not always but you catch some you know the power marks are they're also known as the like the juvenile kind of marking because a lot of fish they will start losing those marks as they get older and bigger now the in my experience so far it seems like the amago and the yamame they tend to retain those big power marks a little bit longer which is something really unique the two of them there's a lot of variation like in different streams you're going to find you know different kinds of amago with some different characteristics but the amago and the yamame are very similar they look alike quite a bit now the main difference the main way of knowing whether you caught an amago or a yamame is going to be the red spots that are going to be on the amago body.

10:51So if you look at them, and one of them has like bright red spots, and you can't miss them for the most part, that's the amago. And then the yamame doesn't have those. So we have some pictures on our website, our last Tenkara magazine. We also had some beautiful pictures of the amago and the yamame. Now, the other type of fish that we catch in trout streams in Japan, and it's technically a char, but it looks really similar, is the Iwana. The Iwana, the name comes from rockfish, you know, something about them kind of hiding under rocks, which all the trout do, but for some reason they decided to name Iwana rockfish. Another possible reason that I've heard Iwana being called rockfish is that if you put them on top of a rock, like in dry land and I don't recommend this but if you put them on on dry rocks their fins are going to be sticking out to the side and they can support themselves upright and some people even say they can walk on rocks. So the Iwana is a little bit more similar to what a lot of you know as the brook trout. The brook trout is also a char and they have some similar characteristics you know like the the little spots a lot of times like white spots on the body and some of them will also have vermiculations on top of the body on the very on the back so that's an easy way to tell that it's a iwana as well so those are the three main fish that we catch in mountain streams in japan now that you know the fish that you're going to be catching in japan let's talk a little bit about traveling in the country. We can cover the times of the year to go when you're going to be able to fish, as well as certain of the regions, as well as a couple of tips on getting around and that kind of thing. My favorite time of year to go in Japan, usually there's two times of years that I like to go to Japan. I like to go there approximately mid-April to early May, or mid to late August. So those are times when the weather is going to be very pleasant. If you go there in the middle of summer, you know, June, July, early August, it can be scalding hot. And Japan is a very humid country. So in my experience, it's not the most pleasant time of year to be there, even though you're going to be high up in mountain streams eventually when you go visit.

13:32So I do try to time my trips to mid-April to early May or mid to late August through early September. Now one of the restrictions that we have in Japan is going to be the fishing season. So Japan is really interesting too, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Every river is managed by what they call a co-op. Essentially, the local residents, they have certain people that are in charge of managing the river or the river system, depending on where you are. And some of them are going to be closing at different times. But as a rule of thumb, you're looking at the times you're going to be able to fish is going to be between March 1st and September 30th at the latest. So that's really, as a general rule, the fishing season in Japan. There are very, very few exceptions that go early, that are open earlier or stay open late. For the most part, March 1st through September 30th is when you can fish.

14:38Early March actually is also very good. It might be a little bit sluggish, but another time of year that I like to go there too is March, a very pleasant time of year to fish. when it comes to destinations you know japan is not a huge country you can visit a lot of different areas but we all have limited amount of time just to kind of give you a sense of perspective i've i've heard of japan the size of japan being compared to the size of california so not a whole lot bigger if you're talking about the main island anyways and then you have of course, Hokkaido, which is a very huge island up north, a very famous fishing area, but primarily for salmon. When we're talking about Tenkara in particular, we're talking mostly about fishing in the main part of Japan. And that's going to be like the main island in Japan. My favorite regions, I mean, there's a lot of different areas. Essentially, all of Japan, 70% of Japan is covered in mountains and one of the things that I realized really early on is that you can fish almost anywhere there because there's so many mountains and mountain streams. The areas that I have most experience fishing are going to be near Yamagata which is north of Tokyo and from there you have some hills and mountains really close by and the Japanese Alps which is this area between Tokyo and Osaka, and you'll see in a map it's a big mountain range, the Japanese Alps is where I spend most of my time. That includes like Gifu Prefecture and Nakano Prefecture, for example.

16:25So when we're talking about names of cities that some of you might recognize, Takayama, for example, is a very famous fishing, or it's a very famous tourist destination, I should say, and there's great fishing all around there. The place that I mentioned earlier in the podcast where I've spent a lot of time is the Maze village in Gifu prefecture. Maze is near the town of Hagiwara, which is also a small town. And the most famous city nearby there is Gero, G-E-R-O. So Gero is famous for the hot springs. So Maze is a great area. There's a fishing center. There's some good accommodations there it's a little bit more you know remote you're not going to see a lot of people there's not a train that goes into the town of maze but look up mazegawa fishing center and that's a great area to visit as well so there's a lot of regions that you can visit of course a lot of people are going to be attracted to like mount fuji area there's some good fishing there as well a little bit north of tokyo another touristy destination that people like to visit It is the town of Nikko, N-I-K-K-O.

17:34And I'll put all these notes in our podcast, tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. So I have the names of these towns and a little bit more information on our podcast page. Oftentimes, we don't make plans based on where we're going to fish. We make plans on things that we want to see. So for example, the towns of Takayama and Nikko, those are two great destinations that I highly recommend people go check. and when you get a chance fish a little bit as well. Now, you know, we do get asked very frequently by people who are going to Japan. It's like, hey, I'm going to go to Japan next month. Do you have any resources on, you know, any guides that you can recommend and that kind of thing? So it's always a little bit hard because Japan doesn't really have a guiding culture. It's really hard to find fishing guides. we do have some contacts in like Mazegawa that we recommend people to because I've been kind of trying to encourage a couple of the locals to take on clients on occasion but it's a little bit hard there's this mix of you know some of the people that know the waters well might not speak English you know so sometimes you might have to go with two people somebody who knows the rivers well and that kind of thing but there's not a guiding infrastructure at the moment it's something that i've been working with a couple of people there to try to develop the main resource that i like to recommend right now is on facebook actually or on the tenkarausa.com forum there's some japanese anglers that are on facebook if you go to tenkara anglers the the group or tenkara japan and you might be able to connect with people there get some information occasionally you might even be able to connect with somebody who is willing to take you around a little bit or show you a little bit of the waters unfortunately not a whole lot of fishing guiding that happens in japan however i would say that the fishing is not that difficult one of the benefits that japan has or one of the really good upsides of Japan is access to water.

19:52Even though you do have to figure out a place to buy a fishing license and that kind of thing, the access to water is great. If you go to a mountain village and you see a river, and even if there's a rice farm that is next to the river, you don't really have to worry about it. You can park or walk over there and walk into the river. There's not a whole lot of that issue with private property when it comes to being in the water. There's some places, and usually in my experience, they're very well marked, and it's really rare as well. Now, talking a little bit about fishing licenses and how things are managed in Japan. You know, in the United States, as an example, every state has a fishing license. So you buy a fishing license for Colorado, and you can fish anywhere you want in Colorado. That's not the case in Japan. So the way things work in Japan when it comes to fishing licenses, every river and sometimes every section of a river, it's a little tricky to figure out.

20:57But if you're going from one valley to another and you look at a map and there seems to be a clear drainage, you can assume that the drainage with the main river is going to be managed by a co-op. So usually every village that has a river drainage is going to have its own cooperative, and you have to buy a fishing license for that particular rivershed. It's a little bit confusing. I really wish there was a national fishing license or a provincial fishing license, but there isn't. So whenever you go to a certain town and you want to fish there, you have to buy a fishing license for that town. The fishing license is for a day. you can buy a day license in most places and they usually range between five and about fifteen dollars for a day most of the places are about ten dollars for a day of fishing not the cheapest but you know usually that's just how it is in certain areas that are more that have a lot more fishing for actually another area that i forgot to mention is a kind of kogan it's a little bit hard to get there. There's no trains to go nearby, but if you're driving, that's a very, an example of a place that has a lot of fishing. It's Nagano Prefecture, and it's a famous fishing kind of destination. The other area is Itoshiro, the Itoshiro River. Those are two areas that are examples of areas that people go to to fish, and when you go visit those areas, there's places with these flags usually red flags that indicate where you can buy a fishing license sometimes you see somebody who they don't have rangers but they have like local volunteers oftentimes they have like a little red arm band that they wear around their arms and they're going around collecting a fee for a fishing license. Not the easiest system, but you can ask people, Tsuri can. Tsuri means fishing. Can is kind of their word when you say Tsuri can, is fishing license. So if you're going around, ask somebody, Tsuri can, with a question mark intonation, and somebody might be able to direct you to that. When you're going around in trains and that kind of thing, you come across all kinds of waters a lot of places are going to have trout and you can buy a fishing license and start fishing on your own a little tricky to figure it out for sure always best if you can connect with people ahead of time so local people but also tricky to do of course i apologize i don't have a whole lot more to offer here you know it's the infrastructure for fishing tourism is not quite what I wish he was I wish I could give you a little bit more beta but I think you'll be able to figure it out pretty well if you know the words to the can and when you get there and you see there is an abundance of water now let's talk a little bit about so I talked about the seasons to go and the destinations that I like you know the Japanese Alps and like Nagano Prefecture, you have the Kaida Kogen area. And I'll put all these notes in our podcast at tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. But let's talk a little bit about fishing in Japan.

24:25So the fishing in Japan, it should not, again, I'll repeat, be the main reason for you to go visit, in my opinion. Japan has its moment, I think, if you will. There's some places that do have superb fishing but in my experience there are very few and far between that's one of my points of contention is I wish that people in Japan had been better about you know conserving their fish and promoting the sustainability of fishing in Japan unfortunately for the most part Japan is still very much a catch-and-keep culture and in my experience that has made the fishing in Japan quite horrible. It's quite sad to say that. I wish I could say otherwise because Japan does have some of the most beautiful rivers I know and when I spent some time in Japan like a couple months living in a mountain village and I would meet some of the local officials for example and it always broke my heart when they asked me so how was the fishing how has been your experience with fishing here and it broke my heart to be honest with them but i felt like i had a duty to to say what i what i felt and i always had to say you know demaze for example is the most beautiful river i know but it's got no fish in it and it does it's not that it doesn't have any fish but it definitely could be much better.

26:00And it was always also very heartbreaking to see the cooperatives, for example, buying fish, putting the fish in the rivers, and then people would come and just catch and just keep it and take it home. And they're treating it like a supermarket. So that's a big issue that I have with Japan. It's a lot of catch and keep. When you talk about catch and release, it's still very much a foreign concept. uh somebody has told me that fewer than one percent of the riversheds in japan or fewer than one percent of the waters in japan are catch and release it's just not part of the culture right now i hope eventually it's going to change and the fishing is going to flourish again but you know the fishing is not that great the nature on the other hand is absolutely beautiful and there's and there's going to be fish and you're going to catch fish of course it's just going to be challenging in most places. There are some places that are catch and release. The one that I have most familiarity with is the Itoshiro River. The Itoshiro is not too far from the town of Gujo in the prefecture of Gifu. You go a little bit, you go about 40 minutes to an hour mostly west and a little bit north of Gujo to reach Itoshiro.

27:22And in that section, they devoted, I believe it was about 10 kilometers, you know, about six miles or so to catch and release only. There's still a lot of waters around it that are catch and keep. But the section that is famous in Itoshiro is a catch and release area. And there's a beautiful little place to stay there. the Sasaki-san Mishiku, for example, which is a ski resort area during the winter. But you'll see there. So that's a fishing area that is famous. The other one is the Kaida Kogen. And it's not catch and release, but they really do a good job. And a lot of the visitors there do catch and release, which is very helpful. so in some you don't go to japan just to fish and you know get exhausted from catching a lot of fish that's not really going to happen for the most part uh you do want to go there for the culture for the experience and a few things that i'd recommend you do not miss and probably actually i'll start with one of my favorite things period to do when i go to japan or two of my favorite things which is to visit hot springs especially when you've been fishing all day long if you've been wet waiting or maybe it's been raining on you and it's one of the most incredible things to have access to in japan there's hot springs just about everywhere and most fishing areas in particular are going to have some hot springs nearby so you can fish get cold at the end of it go to hot spring and relax the onsen it's absolutely probably one of my main reasons to keep going back to japan actually the hot springs and those are really interesting experience very relaxing not to be missed the other thing that i love to go to japan for is the food oh my gosh i can't talk enough about the food uh i do have a few favorite things that i that i like to eat there my number one style of food is what they call yakitori yakitori is a usually skewered meats that people grill over a fire usually it's a chicken pieces but there's also all kinds of weird meats and i love them all it's just a great style of eating in one cooking book that i was reading reading recently somebody referred to it as the simplest cuisine in japan and maybe that's what attracted me to it from the beginning it's a little bit like tenkara it's a very simple style of eating you skewer meats and you grill them and you eat it so that with some beer of course you have to have some really cold beer when you're eating yakitori and then of course like the accommodations in japan they kind of bring the best of both words a lot of times uh you have there's different places that you can stay when you go to mountains uh the the most common name that you hear that I highly recommend you try to visit is also known as the ryokan. So there's different classes of hotels or accommodations and lodges that you can stay in. A ryokan is usually a little bit, I wouldn't call it necessarily upscale, but a little bit more traditional.

30:38Most often you're going to have the tatami mats, the room might have like your own tea set, so you can have some tea in the morning. And many of those places, also many of the ryokans have their own dedicated hot springs and they make their food right there so that's um if you get to choose a place to stay highly recommend you stay for at least a couple of days in ariokan where you're going to have the best food and oftentimes a hot spring as well it's not the cheapest place but there's not a whole lot of cheap options to of places to stay in japan but a ryokan is definitely worth the experience the the other kinds of places another one is a mishiku usually it's a little bit more modest oftentimes they will still have food as well my experience in mishikus has always been great i have not had many bad experiences anywhere in japan to be honest the the service industry in japan is absolutely phenomenal i mean they really try to take good care of you and try to make your experience very good.

31:47Talking about accommodations, I can talk a little bit about camping as well. Japan has a lot of public land, so you can camp in a lot of different places. You don't want to camp, of course, in somebody's property near somebody's house or anything like that. But just a few things to consider. it is a very wet country it does rain a lot so you do want to bring some good rain gear when you're going to the mountain areas there are some hazards to be aware of uh there are bears uh people are always surprised that to know that there are bears in japan and there's quite a few of them depending on the area that you're going to there's going to be more of course and these are they're small kind of black bears but they're also very aggressive black bears so just something to be aware of i wouldn't be alarmed or anything i've camped there a few times i still have not seen a bear but just something to be very aware of you see many times japanese anglers who are going a little bit more into the back country carrying little bell bears and that kind of thing I really don't like the noise of those, but you will see little bell bears on people's backpacks, and now you know what those are for.

33:06There's also some Japanese hornets or wasps that bite an extremely painful bite, apparently. I've never been bitten, and I'm hoping I don't come across them, but they're very aggressive as well, and you have to look out for them certain times of year in particular. And the last thing that you have to be aware of is snakes. You know, there are some snakes as well. The mamushi, some of you might already know the mamushi is the name of a very poisonous snake. And it's famous in the Tenkara community because there's a famous type of fishing fly tied with a snake skin. And I'll save that for a conversation for another day. So just be aware if you're camping, do a little research and just kind of be prepared. I don't quite recommend going on your own, but there's great camping opportunities in a lot of Japan. Lastly, I'll talk a little bit about getting around and just some of the logistics of getting around in Japan.

34:07If you're going to Japan for your first time, you'll find it incredibly overwhelming as soon as you get there. and you know you see a lot of Japanese words of course and you have no idea what's going on but first of all just when you get there and you get overwhelmed take a few seconds and take a deep breath you'll be okay just know that you'll be okay and very quickly you'll figure out like how to get from point a to point b and Japan has an incredible infrastructure it's uh it's one of the easiest places to travel to and travel around. The first time I went, I was with my wife, who's familiar with Japan. I felt completely overwhelmed for a few minutes. And all of a sudden, I started looking around. I was like, yeah, it's not that hard, actually. So I'll talk a little bit about the trains and a couple other modes of transportation and a little bit about money as well. So first of all, trains. The train network in Japan is incredible. So you have the Shinkansen, which a lot of people know is the bullet trains, and you can get around really fast on those. And then there's some local trains. Regardless, if you're considering visiting Japan at all, I'd highly recommend you just take a look at Japan Rail Pass. The Japan Rail Pass is only available to foreigners who do not reside in Japan and they're usually for most travel it's going to be an extremely economical way of traveling but in my experience also very very convenient so rather than having to buy tickets every time and try to figure out the system you can present your pass tell people where you want to go and get a ticket and go you don't have to be purchasing tickets and figuring out your budget as you go and you can buy the japan rail pass for different durations depending on how long you're going to stay almost every single one of my trips i buy one because it's a very economical way to get around for the most part i do recommend using the train system it's an incredible system i can get around almost anywhere with that and then occasionally you might have to get into a bus but not very often then when I went there for a little bit of a longer period back in 2011 I did decide to rent a car and that was a great way to travel as well don't really recommend that as your first mode you know your first experience in Japan because you're driving on the opposite side of the road and you're trying to figure everything out as you go but as if you do visit japan a little bit more occasionally or eventually you may want to consider renting a car i was able to get to these really remote places that would not be accessible otherwise and i was able to visit all these really cool shops and that kind of thing i rented the car online i believe it was something like smile rent a car there's a lot of different companies there that rent the cars but um very pain-free of course it it is intimidating for sure you know you're driving you get to japan you get to the airport and you're immediately driving the opposite side of the road and you're going fast and trying to figure out where to go but if you rent a car to the cool things that they have a really good gps system it's going to be a little tricky to navigate it because it's in japanese but if somebody can show you at least a way to get to the input in the destination there's a cool feature in all gps's in japan where you input the phone number of your destination and it's going to take you there so that's a great feature that the the cars have over there if you do rent a car you have to be mindful of tow roads so occasionally you have to pay tows depending on where you're going and that's a little bit of an inconvenience there's a But, you know, there's some cars.

38:13I highly recommend renting a car only if you have some good contacts over there because there's some things that are going to make life easier and things that are a little bit stressful. When it comes to money, you know, if you're going there and you're interested in fishing, you have to figure out a money situation. Japan is a very developed country. If you're in any big city, you can use your credit card. just about anywhere, but I have kind of been caught in a couple of pinches in a couple of places. So a couple of tips that I'll share with you here. Bring some cash with you for sure, or at least when you get to the airport or if you're landing in Tokyo or Osaka, stop at one of the ATMs at the airport if you haven't done it before and get some cash. But I actually really do recommend taking some cash with you before you go because it can be a little tricky to find ATM machines in other places. But in any case, so in the big cities, you can use credit cards almost anywhere. Smaller restaurants, they're not usually equipped with a credit card machine and that kind of thing. So you do need cash very often in Japan. Even though it's a very developed country you do need to bring some cash with you now where i have run into a little bit of trouble was in the mountain villages uh where i where i visited and and then i occasionally i would run out of money have run out of money a couple of times because i thought i could just use a credit card uh and you can't in most businesses in mountains uh of japan so if you do need to withdraw money there's a lot of bank systems but i always had a real hard time withdrawing money for most banks stop at the post office so the post office is going to have atm machines where your credit or your debit card should work so that's one of the main resources they should be easy to identify and that's the best most reliable place that i found to withdraw money. The second best place has been 7-Elevens. So there's going to be a lot of convenience stores.

40:36And I believe now they're making some changes where all the 7-Elevens should have an ATM where you can withdraw money with a foreign debit card. But when I was last there, I went into one or two 7-Elevens and I could not make my card work. So post office, super reliable. And I think now most 7-Elevens are as well. Your debit card should have a four-digit PIN. I think that's pretty standard, but just making a note so that you know. And last thing, too, that I found is helpful is communication. As much as I thought it would be much easier in Japan, Wi-Fi is not as easily accessible to most foreigners as we would think. So usually what I do, depending on how long I'm going and that kind of thing, how much data I plan on using, the simplest way in my experience has been to notify my U.S. cell phone provider that I'm going to go there and try to get a batch of data that I can use when I'm in Japan.

41:51And I try to be very mindful not to use it too much, but it becomes really handy to have my smartphone, be able to access data and use my GPS or other features. So I usually pre-purchase some data here. But another option is when you get to the airport, you can very often rent a cell phone with a certain amount of data. So that's usually going to come in handy if you're trying to find directions to go somewhere, if you want to really quickly look at your map on your iPhone, for example, or if you want to update your friends with your Facebook update of the latest fish that you caught. The cool thing about data in Japan and cell phone service is that you pretty much have reception anywhere. And we're talking about deep in mountain streams in Japan. Very often you can get reception, you know, in the most remote places. It's hard to find a place where you cannot get access to some kind of cell phone connectivity. So it comes in very handy when you catch that Amago. When you first visit, take a picture of it and use some of your data to share the picture with us.

43:05Now that we've talked about the fishing in Japan, the traveling, why don't we talk a little bit about the pronunciation of certain tenkara words so that you can get around a little bit more, be understood a little bit more easily when you're visiting Japan. Now I've got my wife Margaret here with me in the studio and she's going to help us work through some of those words. Margaret is a fluent Japanese speaker. She speaks Japanese even though she's born and raised in the United States. She speaks Japanese with her parents at home and she grew up speaking Japanese. So we're going to be sharing with you how to say a few things in Japanese as well as how to pronounce certain key words in Japanese that you might have read about on our blog and so forth. So Margaret thanks for joining me here today. Can you tell people... First of all, let's help people travel in Japan. So can you say, do you speak English in Japanese? Can you say that a little bit more slowly?

44:12Cool, thank you. So that's how you can ask people if they speak English when you're traveling. Now, what about... Let's ask people, where do I buy a fishing license? if you can say that in a simple way. So actually, how do you say fishing license in Japanese? Tsuriken. So Tsuri, if I understand, is fishing, right? Yes. Okay, so Tsuriken is the fishing license. So usually when I'm traveling in Japan, I try to look for these little flags that tell me where the fishing licenses are. And I'll try to post a picture on our podcast webpage later on so you can find what it looks like. But you can just say tsuriken, you know, like an intonation, like a question mark intonation, and somebody might be able to point you in a fishing area anyways to where to get a fishing license. Now, let's help people get the pronunciation of certain Japanese words. So how would you say tenkara? Tenkara.

45:13Now, how would you say, let's talk about the names of the fish, which are also coincidentally the names of our fishing rods that we offer at Enkariose. How would you say amago? Amago. What about the very popular iwana rod and also the char called the iwana? How would you pronounce that? Iwana. Now the other fish that we have is the yamame. How would you say that? Yamame. And then one word that a lot of people have adopted is kebari, which is the word that we use for artificial fly. you know where ke means feather right yes and body is like the word for hook once it's next to feather now kebari is like a lot of people have adopted that word anytime they're referring specifically to tenkara flies how would you say kebari in japanese kebari perfect so i think that kind of gives you a good idea of the main words that people have read here and there um oh and what about sato so sato is actually not exactly a japanese word um sato is the name of one of our rods but it's also the name of a japanese or a british diplomat who lived in japan for a long time how would you say that if you were to say that in japanese sato sato perfect and oh we have the ito too how could i forget the ito rod how would you say that one ito perfect so hopefully they'll kind of help people pronounce the words correctly next time they go to Japan and so that we make sure that I'm not misleading our listeners here.

46:53So that's my tidbit about fishing and traveling in Japan on today's Tenkara Cast. Hopefully that information is going to help anybody who's looking at traveling to Japan at some point to find their way around a little bit more. Again I'm going to post links and more information on the podcast page for this podcast. So visit tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast and I'll have a little bit more information in there. If you have any questions at all do connect with us on Facebook. Facebook.com forward slash Tenkara USA. You'll find us there. Like our page and ask us any questions that you might have or share any comments so that other viewers and listeners can also learn a little bit about your experiences fishing in Japan. So until next time on the Tenkara Cast. Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu. Check out his music at takenobumusic.com.

47:55We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. And until next time on the Tenkara Cast.