Spending nearly 2 months in Japan has opened up opportunities to meet people I never have thought I’d be able to. Last week I had an incredible encounter with 89-year old tenkara angler, Mr. Ishimaru Shotaro. Meeting Shotaro-san, a tenkara master of  older days, was  one of the most interesting meetings I’ve had. And, it helped provide a few insights on the world of tenkara. I will be writing more about Shotaro-san after returning from Japan (I’m leaving the country today). In the meantime, I wanted to provide a quick introduction.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I first started researching tenkara  I ran into some Japanese blogs with some awesome pictures of people climbing waterfalls, swimming through pools, rappelling, and then enjoying some tenkara fishing in difficult to get places. They called the activity of climbing waterfalls “shower climbing”, and in Japanese it is also called “sawa no bori“.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m getting behind on all the content I’d like to write as it is difficult to keep up with all the experiences. Yesterday I had a wonderful day with staff from the Patagonia-Japan stores. I felt inspired by their energy and a couple of the pictures I took, so I submitted a trip report to Patagonia for their blog. Since that may take a while for them to see it, I thought I’d share the story here

Patagonia and Tenkara  – Crossing Paths Again

Today tenkara, Tenkara USA (or, in this case, Tenkara International) and Patagonia once again crossed paths. This time in Japan with staff from a couple of Patagonia stores in Tokyo.

At the moment, I am sitting in my tatami room in the town of Kaida Kogen, Nagano prefecture in Japan. We just finished a hot-pot dinner, which topped off a day of teaching tenkara to four Patagonia-Japan employees. Over the next couple of days more people will join the tenkara class. As I learned today, employees from different Patagonia stores in Tokyo have formed an informal “Patagonia Tenkara Club”, which currently has about a dozen members.

Dr. Ishigaki doing a tenkara demonstration for Patagonia employees of different Tokyo stores

It’s serendipitous that very soon after I started Tenkara USA, I discovered Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, had recently become a tenkara convert. Especially given the fact that Yvon’s book, Let My People Go Surfing, was one of 2 books that inspired my business, and the one I used as a guide on developing of my own business philosophies….

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I headed south to visit two craftsmen. The primary purpose of this trip was to visit the renowned tenkara net maker (tenkara tamo) Mr. Yukihiro Yoshimura, of the store “Mankyu”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Back from a 2-day trip to Kaida-Kogen in Nagano prefecture. The event was incredibly fun, and I got to meet wonderful people.

In this picture Dr. Ishigaki teaching the class on day 2. Among other things he talked about the order one should try fishing a spot, start from the end of the pool and working your way up. He also demonstrated how working a spot from different directions can allow you to use different techniques (e.g. natural drift from below, pausing the fly from the side, dragging the fly from above, etc.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I thought I would not log on at all during the weekend, but found a few minutes of online time before heading to bed.

This morning I drove to Kaida-kogen, an area very popular among fishermen, for a tenkara class and fundraiser event with Dr. Ishigaki and Kurakami-san.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow morning I’m headed for a 2-day tenkara event, and next week my schedule is packed. I hope to write more soon, but thought I’d leave you with a post of fishing before I go. This time I want to also share a few Japanese terms for specific types of stream, or terms that I use very often to figure out where to go fishing. Like the often cited example of eskimos have 30 words for different types of snow, the Japanese culture also developed a good vocabulary for describing their streams.  To complete the post, I’ll include a couple of my best fish shots so far.

Read the rest of this entry »

Early this week I looked at my calendar and Wednesday was a free day – I have been busier on this trip than I had ever imagined. So, I decided to revisit the tamo shops a couple of hours away from here. This was my third visit. I actually had to return before I leave to pick up a couple of pre-ordered mesh bags for my nets. But, mostly I was excited to look at all the nets I could before the end of my trip.

Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend the Mazegawa Fishing Center hosted the Hoba Sushi Festival. The highlight of the event was the lighting of 10,000 candles, made from recycled cooking oil, to remember those who lost their lives on the earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11th. The candles lasted as long as 3 hours as those present enjoyed live performances by a group of artists. Everytime I looked around I was filled with awe from the energy around us. The moon popped behind the mountains on the other side of the river, candles lined up the small stream feeding the Mazegawa. It’s hard to put into words the energy I felt at the event, but thought I’d share a few pictures.

Read the rest of this entry »

Actually, the title is a bit delayed. This was the view from my room yesterday, when I stayed at a most quaint ryokan (type of hotel) in the small town of Osaka 小坂 (not to be confused with the big city of Ōsaka, 大阪). In case anyone is interested in coming to this area (highly recommended if you can), the ryokan is the Sengakukan, very famous in the region (and for disclosure, I did receive free room and board without any expectations of promoting it, though I’m happy to do so).

The fishing was okay. As with most streams in Japan, the number of fish in the rivers was not that large. The fish that do remain in the water are just gorgeous, as they have not been beaten up by bad catch and release practices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I was able to spend time with the well known Mr. Katsutoshi Amano. One of the few people considered to be a living tenkara master in Japan, Amano-sensei is very well known in fishing circles in Japan. He may be the longest-living practitioner of tenkara in Japan. And, his fly-tying is very simple and interesting, for he uses no vise, and eyeless-hooks.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are paintings that portray the mountains of Japan forming beautiful layers of colors. I have been seeing these pretty often when I drive to different fishing destinations. This was a shot taken when Chris and I were driving to Itoshiro. It was awesome to see 6 clear layers of mountains overlapping each other.