“When we were teenagers, the wild lads used to creep out at night and take An-chan’s boat to Takamatsu to have some fun. The lights across the water made it seem like the town was floating on the sea. It was like we were about to land on a shining Palace of Fun, and we would get really excited as we approached the harbor.”

This was the story I heard from one of the islanders that kicked off our trip to Megijima. Only 4.5 km from Takamatsu, the quiet island is 9 km in circumference, and home to just 200 people. A quick 20 minute ride from Takamatsu brought us to yet another experience of Setouchi life.

The “city boy” and the “man of the sea”.

Two great people I have made friends with since I started visiting the island are “Kazu-yan” and “Taka-yan”. Kazuhisa Hamashoji (40) and Takahiko Nishiguchi (38) still call each other by their childhood nicknames. They weren’t part of the wild gang, so they didn’t get to visit the Palace of Fun (ha ha), but they are of the same generation. Hamashoji-san is the “city-boy” – he works for JA bank on the island, is single and likes to go to Takamatsu or to other areas on the weekends. Nishiguchi-san, on the other hand, has followed in his family business, and is a fisherman. Hamashoji-san doesn’t drink and prefers desserts. He’s the one who talks a lot, while Nishiguchi-san is quiet. But despite their differences, they are the best of pals.

Work on the island

Hamashoji-san, didn’t you ever consider working at sea?

Hamashoji (H): My family were in the aquaculture business, but I hate the sea. I get really seasick, can’t hold a fish, can’t stand the waves – I’d never have made it as a fisherman! (laughs)

You work at JA on the island, right?

H: I’m here on Megijima for half the week, and work on the next island, Ogijima for the rest. After I finished college, I worked at a company in Takamatsu, but when they told me I would have to work over the Spring holidays, I thought I’ve had enough of this (laughs). Just happened there was an opening at JA on the island, so I came back.

What exactly do you do now?

H: I mainly work on regular banking things. I know all the old folk on the island. The old women will bring oranges to the bank and we’ll sit eating them together. Can’t imagine doing that in most normal banks (laughs). But being able to laugh with the islanders everyday like that is what makes me happiest.

The bank is an oasis on the island! Nishiguchi-san, did you always want to be a fisherman?

Nishiguchi (N): Not really….. well, my dad was a fisherman, so….

H: This guy, he did 80 days at sea fishing for tuna when he was a student and wasn’t sick once. Even right out there in the rough waters of the Pacific.

N: Yeah, well…

Seems like you were meant to be a fisherman! Hamashoji-san, what do you do with your free time?

H: When I’m not busy with the firebrigade, I take my boat over to Takamatsu. I’ve got a car I keep at Takamatsu harbor, so I sometimes go off into Shikoku for a drive. If I get the urge to have some ramen noodles in the evening, I’ll just hop in the boat and go to town.

(It’s just a 10 minute walk from the harbor to downtown Takamatsu, and 10 minutes by boat if it’s your own, so you can be there in 20 minutes. Makes me jealous. )

Nishiguchi-san, your mornings start really early, right?

N: I get up at 3:30, and take yesterday’s catch to market. Then I’ll go home for breakfast at around 6:30. Then we’ll go out after that, but it depends on the time of year what we’ll fish for. We go out by boat at some times of the year, but in the autumn we dive for sazae shells or abalone. Between December and April we dive for dairagi (similar to a scallop). We wear a dry suit with a helmet and air-pipe, and dive to up to 25 meters. With the weights on it weighs up to 60 kg.

Like a spacesuit.

N: Yeah, that’s it. We’ll dive at around 7 am, and come back onto land at around 3 pm.

Wow, you dive for that long!?

N: When you dive below 20 meters, you have to spend 4 hours in a pressure tank on the boat so you don’t get the bends. It’s not totally safe even then. I got them once – hurts like hell. Your arms and legs go numb and I can’t even describe how painful it is. It can kill you easily. Going down for dairagi is bloody cold and miserable, so I don’t know how many more years I’ll be able to keep doing it.

When the dairagi are over, in the Spring we trawl for sawara and in the summer it’s different again. The Inland Sea is rich in fish, and we catch about 100 different species throughout the year, so there are lots of different methods we use.

I have to say, the dairagi we had here on the islands was really delicious.

N: The ones you get at market, they’re put in packs so they soak up the water and get fat, but when you go to fry them they loose all that juice. But you try ours here, they stay just as fat and juicy even when you fry them.

H: There’s lots of tricks to eating fish. Eating hamachi sashimi, you should actually leave it for 2 days – that’s when it tastes the sweetest. It’s not good when its crunchy and fresh.

N: Yeah – you need to wait for the moment just before it starts to rot! (laughs)

Schooldays

Although Nishiguchi-san is a father of three, working as a fisherman on Megijima means he lives alone. The family all lived on the island to begin with, but once the kids were old enough to start kindergarten, His wife and the kids moved to Takamatsu. The reason is simple – there is no kindergarten on the island. Megijima Primary School, the only school the island ever had, graduated its last pupil 5 years ago, and closed.

What was it like when you were both at school here? What kind of games did you play?

H: We lived opposite each other, so we were always playing together. “Hey, Taka-yan” “What?” – and we were in the front door before the other had answered… Do you remember we built that house, when we were in 4th grade? There was that anime on TV…. Trider G7!!

N: Yeah – the hero was a school kid, but for some reason he was also the company CEO. (laughs)

H: We used the slope of the ote (the stone windbreakers that protect the houses from winter gales) and found some scraps of plywood for the walls and roof. It was about 2 tatami mats big (roughly 3.3 m2).

What did you do in there?

H: We would drink tea, and eat cup noodles, read manga….. our friends used to come and play too.

N: The local moms would come and have tea as well (laughs)

How many students were there in the school then?

H: There were 6 kids in my year. Your year was 11 wasn’t it, Taka-yan? The whole school was around 45 at the most. You only had to run through the pine trees from the playground to the beach, so we didn’t have a pool or anything, we just had swimming lessons in the sea. (laughs)

When the kids on the island graduate from primary school, they go to Junior and High School in Takamatsu. And most of them never come back.

Of those 45, how many people have stayed on the island?

H: There’s me and Taka-yan, Naoki and Mitsu – just 4. The rest have all left for work, or to get married.

What’s changed on the island?

H: The biggest change is there are no kids any more. It’s sad not hearing children’s voices on the island. It would be great if our generation could stay here, but there’s no work. If they would only put on some ferries later at night, then people could commute from Takamatsu.

A hard reality of life on the islands is that half of the population is over 65 years old. Knowing that made me want to ask these two just why they hadn’t left, but I held my tongue. Nobody needs a reason to live in the place they were born and raised. Listening to them both, it felt there was just nowhere else they would feel so at ease and happy. And they can come and go between Takamatsu and the island, just like the seagulls on the cliffs. Just 20 minutes separating the neon of the city from the starry night sky of the island. Once more people realize that, I have a feeling it won’t be too long before the island is full of children’s voices again.