With all its American, European and Asian cultural influences, it's easy to forget that Japan is also an island nation in the Pacific.
Japan's connection to another Pacific nation, the Marshall Islands, hit home to this writer one Sunday morning in the fish market at Misaki harbor on the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture, about an hour by train via Yokohama from Tokyo.
Women working there are fond of talking about husbands who spend a year on boats catching huge tuna off the Marshalls before returning with holds full of the frozen fish destined for the nation's supermarkets and sushi bars.