Mikimoto Pearl Island

Last saturday I decided to take Jøran, Elisabeth and the girls for a trip to Mikimoto Pearl Island. We are really becoming experts on navigating our way through Japan by train!! After just under two hours we arrived in a city called Tobago, located on the seaside south of Nagoya. The trip by train was nice since we got to see a lot of typical japanese villages, rice akers, bamboo forrests and drove through a beautiful landscape.
Tobago seems to be quite a tourist place in summer, but we were lucky and it was not very crowded.

The pearl island was just a 5 minute walk from the station. On our way along the seaside we saw a very nice japanese boat, used for tourist sightseeing.


The Mikimoto Island itself is very small and accessable by a 150m long bridge.



Just to spice up the blogg with a little bit of historical information: It was Mr. Kokichi Mikimoto (see pipcture below) who cultured pearls succesfully for the first time in history in 1893.


Luckily we made it just in time to see a presentation of the traditional women pearl divers (Ama). Even though it was rather chilly, probably around 12 degrees, a small boat came with three Ama, dressed in traditional white diving wear. They jumped into the water one by one with their wooden tree basket to collect oysters. No drysuit or neoprene here - just some white thin cloth and very old-fashioned diving goggles.



The ama once played on essential role in the cultivation of pearls. They dove to the ocean bottom to collect pearl oysters, insert a nucleus so that the oyster would start producing a perl and later retrieve the oysters that hopefully had produced a pearl. When exhaling on the surface, the women divers make a whistle like sound called "Isobue". You can read more about the "birth of a pearl" on Mikimoto's pages:
http://www.mikimoto.com/uk/about_jewellery/pearls/birth.html

Today, pearl cultivation technique has of course improved and the ama are no longer needed, but it was still nice to see them diving!!!


And of course they had a nice pearl shop on the island with an intense power of attraction - at least for women... So what else to do than enter the shop and get busy?? They had a lot of lovely pearl jewellery, but since already have a wonderful pearl necklet and a pearl ring, I figured that some earrings were just what I needed :-) So after a loooong time browsing the shop I found a pair that I really liked - at a price that.. well, lets just skip that part! A nice souvenir :D

After our little shopping tour it started raining and we walked back to the station, grabbed som lunch and took the train back to Nagoya. On our way we came across this lovely sign... Well, at least it is good to know that they have understandable escape routes just in case...

Since it was Easter we decided to have dinner at Jonatan's. Just delicious! :D I had choclate fondue with fresh strawberries for desert.... And of course the new pearls had to be tried out. Niiiiice :D