Mikimoto Pearl Island

Day 248 – Pearly whites

We liked our little hotel in Nagoya, so we decided to stay another two nights and use it as a base for the next two days day trips, rather than lugging our stuff about in the heat.  So today we took the train to Toba, about 2 hours south east of Nagoya on the coast and walked across the footbridge to Mikimoto Pearl Island.

The wacky looking ferry near the footbridge.

Mikimoto Pearl Island is known as the birthplace of pearl cultivation and given I already have the pleasure of owning a pair of Japanese pearls, the main interest in coming here was to see the process of how a pearl is cultivated and to see the Ama divers in action.

We headed over to the diving demonstration area as soon as we arrived and watched as the lady divers called “Ama” dived down to pluck pearl oysters, a tradition practiced for over 2,000 years.  Wearing only a white loincloth and mask, the Ama divers originally fished for seaweed, shellfish and lobsters and occasionally found a pearl oyster.  Now pearls are big business and there are hundreds of racks of cultivated shells around the waters of this area and other areas with the right water temperature.  Whilst professional divers today wear a bit more than a see through white cloth (that was just for the tourists), they still practice free diving - without scuba gear.

After the diving we had a look around the dazzling (and some very old) creations in the Pearl Museum and I got to be Queen for five minutes and have all the Japanese ladies standing around coo-ing at me, trying on a crown they had on display hosting 121 diamonds and 63 pearls.

There were also very informative displays about how a pearl is cultivated and a video showing the process where the shell is pried open, an incision is made into the mother shell, a piece of membrane is placed inside the incision with the nucleus to get the process going, before the shell is closed back up and placed back in the sea for two years before it is ready to be harvested.  It was quite a delicate process, with only 50% of the mother shells actually surviving the process and only three-fifths of them producing a viable pearl.  You forget it’s a living process!  There was also information about other regions that produce black pearls and how mother-of-pearl is used.

All the bits needed to start cultivating a pearl.  The better you are at it the more you get paid as the better survival rate your shells have, so each rack that is completed is labelled with the operator’s name for future bonuses.

 

Matt dared me to play dress-ups!

Mother of pearl buttons.

Back in Nagoya we asked the front desk where the nearest Okonomiyaki restaurant was and walked only a few blocks to deliciousness on a grill.  Our waitress was much friendlier than the last guy and was more than happy to oblige when we explained we weren’t confident to cook our own!

Some rice paddy scenery from the train ride home.