Japan - Honshu Island - Tottori Prefecture- Sakaiminato
Rough weather in port
I took an evening flight from Tokyo to Sakaiminato. Outside of the big cities the locals, including taxi drivers do not speak English. I showed the driver my phone of a business near to our boat that I would like to go to. Ten minutes later and after some calls to the operators we took off. The local marina was not taking any boats as the area needed to be dredged, so we were staying in an industrial area. The street was narrow and it was pitch black, the taxi slowed down and dropped me off in the middle of a dark industrial street with no lights. After a rather panicked phone call to Gary I found my way back to Illimité.
Sakaiminato Yacht Rodeo
The following morning the harbour master had offered to take Gary to town to dispose of his oil and buy some new oil so I went along. We were gone an hour and upon our return we noticed the weather had changed dramatically and all hell had broken loose. The winds had picked up and we were in the worst spot to brace the onslaught of waves and winds crushing Illimité into the concrete wall.
Gary deftly deployed additional shore lines to pull Illimité off the wall. One of the lines actually snapped and broke off. Illimité was grinding against the walls rubber post and rocking like a wild child, it was a worrisome event. Our friends came by to offer help, more lines, and we borrowed some more larger fenders to alleviate the grind.
Earlier that day we had a quick tour of the town. The fish market walk through was very interesting. Crabs are the specialty of this town. They had oysters the size of a lumberjacks hand, the snails were huge too.
After we were dropped off I delivered a gift to the harbour master to thank him for the ride. A half hour later, he drove back to the fish market we had visited earlier and bought us crabs and crab fried rice as a gift! There is a very strong gifting culture in Japan. We have been given many gifts just to welcome us to their country. Typically the gifts are edible treats. I learned on this day, if you give someone a gift they are compelled to give you a gift back.
Our boat was crazy out of control rocking. Our good friends had the sense to invite us on their boat for dinner since our boat was still rocking violently. We brought the crabs to share and some sake.
