潮干狩り

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it is now the “Golden Week” holidays in Japan.

It is popular during this week for people to go on trips. Many people who live in Tokyo are going to other parts of Japan or overseas and many Japanese who live in other parts of Japan are in Tokyo now to see the big city.

Today in particular is the holiday 「健保記念日」 (“Constitution Day“). (Click here to read my FAQ about it).

The weather has been warm and sunny since Golden Week started and it’s forecast to continue with the beautiful weather for the entire Golden Week holidays.

The TV news said today that this is the first time in twenty-five years that it hasn’t rained at least one day of Golden Week!

At this time of year, 「潮干狩り」 (“Clam digging”) is popular in Japan.
Many people, especially retired people and families, buy “Clam digging sets” (which include a net bag to hold the clams, a bucket, a small shovel and a gardening fork) and go to the shore and hunt for clams.

The popular places get quite crowded…especially in the Tokyo area and especially during the holidays.

Well, we made plans to go 「潮干狩り」 (clam digging) yesterday. We bought the supplies for the five of us to hunt for clams and we woke up early yesterday and headed to one of the most popular clam digging spots in the Tokyo Bay.

It was extremely crowded but we live in Tokyo so we’re all used to the crowds. It doesn’t faze us.
And besides, my daughters are growing up…I enjoy spending as much time with them as possible before they have their own families.

Also, yesterday was my youngest daughter’s fourteenth birthday. I can’t believe the “baby” of my family is already 14!
So, after our fun day of clam digging (we took home almost 2kg of clams!), my youngest daughter requested to go to a カラオケボックス (“Karaoke box”)…which are private rooms to sing karaoke where only your group can hear you sing…so that’s what we did.

Then we went home and my wife and daughters made spaghetti with clams (that we caught) for my daughter’s “birthday dinner”.

It was a great day!

Here are a couple photos I took during our clam digging. Every other photo I took was of my family digging clams but I don’t put photos of my family online…so I’m only posting these two pictures.
But you can see how crowded it was.