The escalator at the Keikyu Line's Misakiguchi Station transported me to a windswept hilltop where a booth provided information on places to pick mikan (tangerines) and shops sold tuna, toasted laver bread and horse mackerel seasoned with mirin (a rice wine). I boarded a bus. As it descended between mikan orchards and freshly planted fields, I noted further intimations of the sea — trucks emblazoned with "Tuna Express" and "High-Class Blue Fin Tuna." After arriving at the harbor, I strolled along a waterfront crowded with shoals of tuna restaurants.
The large emporium on the pier across the street from restaurant row sells blue fin and other marine delicacies. But noticing a sign for the Jogashima ferry, I was soon being dandled in a chugging boat from which I watched gulls and kites dive for sardines, and a training ship inch away from a quay, a rainbow of streamers slipping from the grasps of well-wishers ashore.
Our boat bumped the island pier, and the ferryman blamed a wind-tossed sea.