I hadn’t planned to go fishing this week, but since the forecast kept pushing the rain further back, I decided to force a fishing trip on Saturday while it was still sunny or cloudy. I wandered around for a total of about three and a half hours, fishing at two spots in Anan and one in Komatsushima, and ended up with just one fish during the evening bite at the first spot in Anan.
The angler who caught the most nearby landed about six fish in that short dusk window, making him the top performer of the day. Other anglers were doing well if they managed one or two fish. As for me, I only caught one by sheer luck, but at least I didn’t have to go home empty‑handed.
During the session, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation between that top angler (who seemed relatively young) and the older men gathered around him. According to them, the bait he used on his tenya rig was a mix of “aigo,” “aji,” and Marukyu’s recently popular frozen hybrid bait called Hybrid Cross, which is normally used for boat fishing for cutlassfish.
Assuming the anglers around him were using only kibinago, and considering that the tide was weak because it was just before a long‑tide cycle, the cutlassfish were likely not very active. Seeing that he alone was catching fish, the strong smell of his bait mixture probably made a difference. On top of that, he was aggressively jerking his rod to give the tenya a lot of action, which might have excited even the otherwise inactive cutlassfish.
Marukyu’s Hybrid Cross is a bit pricey, but it might be worth trying.
Do you know the word “doppelgänger”? You don’t normally encounter it in everyday life. When I asked AI to explain it, this is what it said:
Quote begins
🧩 What is a doppelgänger? (Key points) A person who looks exactly like you — your face, body shape, even your overall vibe. Its origin lies in European folklore. The term comes from 19th‑century German: doppel + gänger, meaning “one who walks double.”
There is an old superstition that seeing your own doppelgänger is a bad omen. In the past, people believed that “seeing your doppelgänger foretells death.” Today, it’s usually explained as a psychological phenomenon, an illusion, or simply mistaking someone for another person. Of course, as in some videos, there are cases where a real person just happens to look exactly like someone else.
Quote ends
Yesterday, I happened to watch a YouTube video talking about doppelgängers, and it sparked my curiosity. As I looked into it, I remembered that I myself had a doppelgänger experience nearly 50 years ago, back in my university days. That’s the story I want to share today.
Here’s the background. During my first and second year of university, I belonged to a dance club with about 50 male and female members. But around the middle of my third year, I realized that my physical ability for dance — not talent or sense, but pure athletic ability — was inferior to the others. Feeling discouraged, I left the club and moved to a cultural club instead.
I also had a younger brother, three years my junior (I’m the eldest son). I entered university after one year of prep school, and two years later my brother passed the entrance exam and enrolled in the same university. So when I was a third‑year student, he entered as a first‑year student. We were in different faculties — he was in engineering, I was in economics. For the first month, he lived in the same boarding house as me (in a separate tiny 3‑tatami room), but he soon moved to a larger place elsewhere in the city. I stayed in that cramped room for all four years.
Because of that, and because we weren’t very talkative even as siblings, plus the distance between our living places and the lack of smartphones or messaging apps back then, we hardly ever communicated. I later heard from him that he had joined the ESS club — an English conversation club.
All of this is important background for the doppelgänger story.
Some time after I quit the dance club, I was chatting casually with old friends from the club on campus. One of them suddenly said:
“Shige‑chan, your younger brother joined our dance club.”
I said, “What? I do have a younger brother, but he joined the English club from the start. He never said anything about quitting and joining the dance club.”
But my friend insisted that someone who looked exactly like me had joined the dance club. He was a first‑year student — the same year as my brother. His face looked so much like mine that my friend was convinced he had to be my brother.
But honestly, even between parent and child you might see resemblance, but between me, my second brother, and my third brother, our faces are clearly different. No one would mistake us for the same person. So I couldn’t make sense of what my friend was saying.
Of course, I immediately contacted my brother to confirm. He denied it right away — he was still active in the English conversation club.
Even so, the story bothered me. Someone who looked too much like me had joined the dance club. So I asked around and arranged to meet this person directly.
Finally, the day came. We met at a café.
He walked in. I looked at his face — and froze. I rubbed my eyes and looked again.
It was me. Right there in front of me.
I couldn’t believe it, but there he was — another “Shige‑chan.”
Naturally, he reacted the same way. He looked at me with a stunned expression, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
It sounds like a made‑up story, but it was real. He was a complete stranger, just a new student who happened to pass the entrance exam to the same university. But there he was — another version of me.
We even sat sideways on the café sofa and looked at each other from the side. It felt like looking into a mirror from an angle. The resemblance was so strong it made me uncomfortable.
That was the exact moment I experienced my own doppelgänger.
Apparently he had joined the dance club two years after I left. Pure coincidence — but such an extreme coincidence that the remaining members naturally assumed he was my younger brother.
After that meeting, I never saw him again. I stayed at the university for another two years, but the resemblance was so unsettling that we never became friends, and neither of us tried to contact the other. Also, back then the university had separate campuses scattered around the city, so he probably spent his time on a different campus. I never ran into him again until graduation.
There’s a saying that everyone has at least seven or eight people in the world who look just like them. After experiencing this, I can confidently say that doppelgängers do exist. But meeting one doesn’t mean anything special. If I were a prime minister or president, maybe I could use him as a body double to avoid assassination — but as an old man living in rural Tokushima, I obviously don’t need a body double, haha.
It’s an old memory, but truly a rare and unforgettable experience.
The autumn rain front that had been moving south seemed like it might linger over Shikoku for a while, but instead it completely skipped past us and settled over the Pacific. The expected heavy rain never came, so this morning, right after breakfast, I went to retrieve my car that I had evacuated to higher ground. (´ｪ`)
After that, I finished writing about 5,000 characters for an article on a certain subsidy that pays less than one yen per character, and then headed to the nearby “Sen’enkan” for a haircut.
Clerk: “Welcome! How would you like it today, sir?” Me: “Buzz the sides and back with a 3 mm clipper. Make it a shaved style. The rest doesn’t matter—just handle it as you see fit.” With those simple instructions, the clerk finished everything in about ten minutes. Clean and refreshed—just the way I like it. It’s a very simple routine, and it’s always like this.
Back when I was young, I used to pay over 3,000 yen, even though the actual haircut took only 10–15 minutes. After that, they’d force unnecessary extras on me—shaving, massages, ear cleaning, and repeatedly covering my face with hot towels until I felt like I was suffocating. I’d end up stuck in the barbershop for over an hour. Thinking back on that, it really feels like a different world.
Even now, when I see people at Sen’enkan paying extra for shaving or shampooing, I can’t help but think, “Tch, shave your own damn beard at home,” or “Wash your own dirty hair before you come in.” (ﾟ▽ﾟ) Sure, I understand that letting the staff do those unnecessary tasks helps maintain employment in the barber industry and, on a macro level, contributes a little to Japan’s GDP. But since I hate relying on others for anything, I want to do whatever I can by myself. The older you get, the more dependent you tend to become—that’s just how it is. So I want to resist that as much as I can.
Anyway, setting that aside— It seems like all the big names in the cutlassfish scene have shown up in yesterday’s and today’s blogs. Everyone, from veterans to beginners, is getting results and having fun. Reading all that makes me feel like I’m the only one left out since I didn’t catch anything last time.
Now that the troublesome autumn rain front has moved farther south than expected, I’m wondering whether I should also head farther south than my usual spot to target cutlassfish. All that’s left is the decision and the motivation. Well then… what should I do…
なんか、その後の予報、秋雨前線が本州からどんどん高知沖に南下してて、それに併せて豪雨予想も減ってきてますね
こりゃ、避難させてる車の回収時期も早まりそうだな。。。。
Today was a calm and peaceful day.
So this isn’t a tense story like the title might suggest, but I did move only my N-BOX—one of our two cars—up to a slightly higher area near our home.
Starting tomorrow, a relatively weak typhoon is expected to linger for three to four days over the southern part of Kyushu, spinning around the same spot. Because of that, the seasonal rain front is forecast to be pushed down into an unfavorable position, bringing heavy rainfall to Shikoku.
Our area is low-lying, and before levees were built, our home experienced flooding from the Yoshino River multiple times—at worst, the water rose above a person’s height. But that was about 60 years ago, back when I was still in elementary school. After that, even when I lived in Tokushima City or other prefectures as an adult, thanks to the Saigōura Dam, Ikeda Dam, and the levees, we never experienced flooding again.
However, in recent years, there was one occasion when repeated typhoons forced the closure of the floodgate that drains into the nearby Yoshino River. Heavy rain from the north overlapped with that, and the area became an isolated “island” due to inland flooding. Even then, I was living and working in Tokushima City, so I didn’t experience it firsthand. Only my parents—now passed away—were living here at the time. According to what I heard later, the water level didn’t rise very high, and in the end, the entire neighborhood, including our home, avoided being submerged.
Still, residents who had left for work in the morning found the surrounding fields completely underwater by evening, making it impossible to return home. They were forced to wait nearby for about half a day—roughly 12 hours—until the water receded. Experiences like this make inland flooding impossible to dismiss as “someone else’s problem,” and the river flooding currently happening in Tohoku, Toyama, and Kanazawa feels very personal to me.
If severe inland flooding does occur, all the household equipment on the first floor would suffer major damage. That’s fate, and there’s nothing we can do about it—but simply assuming “it probably won’t happen” and giving up on precautions would be irresponsible.
So, fully aware that this might be unnecessary worry, I moved only my car to a nearby high ground within a 10‑minute radius. Even this alone would cut the damage to our cars in half if serious inland flooding occurred. My spouse’s car is covered by insurance that includes water damage, so it would be fully compensated if the worst happened. As for me, I’m too poor to afford such insurance (p_q) so I chose the physical evacuation option.
Now, TV and online news keep warning that Shikoku will be hit by heavy rain for several days starting tomorrow. Ideally, I’d like the rain to fall heavily only around Saigōura Dam to bring the reservoir back up to 100%, and then fall as lightly as possible everywhere else.
Typhoon-san, rainy-season front-san, I’m counting on you.
I last went ayu fishing with the traditional tomo-zuri method on August 20. After nearly twelve days away, it was my first time back on the river.
I started at 10 a.m. By noon, I had eight bites and landed six fish, plus one lost set where two fish got away. The bites came sporadically through the morning, but in the afternoon they completely stopped. Even when I moved around the area, all I found were sandy bottoms with no good stones, so I couldn’t locate a proper holding spot.
To make matters worse, the water temperature kept rising, and even the wild ayu that had been so lively in the morning started turning sideways and losing strength when I tried to swim them. This is the danger of tomo-zuri during extreme low-water conditions.
I fished for just over an hour, and by a little past 1 p.m. I put my rod away. In ultra‑low water, afternoon tomo-zuri simply doesn’t work—the water temperature gets too high.
If you’re going to fish, it has to be early morning while the water is still cool, finishing around noon at the latest. Or, like the bait shop owner does, starting after 3 p.m. and fishing until evening might work. Even then, with the current conditions, the water temperature is probably still too high after 3 p.m., so personally I’d choose morning only.
However, there’s a decent chance of rain this weekend. If the water level rises, the temperature should drop, and fishing might return to normal.
That’s it for my ayu fishing this week.
Ah… once again, at 4 p.m. today, our neighborhood recorded the highest temperature in Japan. Because the area is shaped like a basin, the temperature dropped quickly afterward, but still—it's not exactly a “good” kind of number-one ranking.
I woke up early this morning and started spraying herbicide on my property before 6 a.m. Since I use an electric backpack sprayer, it doesn’t require the kind of physical effort that the old hand‑push type used to, so the work was relatively easy. Even so, including washing the equipment afterward, it took about an hour and a half. I mixed 5 kilograms of herbicide solution and sprayed four rounds, which made me sweat quite a bit. Fortunately, the outside temperature was still around 26–27°C at that time, so the level of fatigue wasn’t too bad.
Once it started getting hot, I stayed indoors the rest of the day—watching YouTube in an air‑conditioned room, reading WiLL, playing with my cat, and listening to music.
By the way, the cutlassfish (tachiuo) fishing tournament held yesterday at Tako Park in Anan turned out to be pretty interesting. The rules were simple: after checking in and measuring the results at the end, participants were free to go anywhere within the prefecture to fish for cutlassfish. At first, I was worried they were going to cram 30 participants onto that narrow breakwater at Tako Park, but with rules like that, there was no need for concern. Since it was a Saturday, I figured regular anglers and local cutlassfish veterans would also show up, and I worried that forcing everyone into one spot might cause trouble—but that turned out to be unnecessary. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the results were decent overall, so that was great. Kudos to the organizers for their hard work.
Starting Monday, I’m planning to switch back to ayu fishing again, but the weather forecast is beginning to show scattered rain icons. I dislike doing tomozuri in the rain, so to avoid that, I’m thinking about moving my schedule forward and heading out earlier while the weather is still holding.
Well, Prime Minister Takaichi has once again shown powerful leadership and made another bold, decisive move. Right now, Fukuoka Prefecture and its prefectural assembly are under heavy public criticism for their taxpayer‑funded “luxury overseas inspections” (which are essentially sightseeing trips) and for pouring huge amounts of money into various projects based on the vague and incomprehensible concept of “One Health.”
On top of that, a major scandal erupted when Yoshimura—an assembly member who once served as speaker, later left the LDP, and is now independent—publicly revealed that in order to become the next speaker or vice‑speaker, candidates were expected to pay 15 to 20 million yen out of their own pockets to Kurauchi, the long‑time boss of the Fukuoka LDP assembly group. This revelation turned the whole situation into a massive extortion scandal.
Of course, Kurauchi and former vice‑speaker Nakao completely denied any exchange of money. But after Nakao resigned without explanation, and then Kurauchi himself suddenly quit the assembly a few days ago without offering any reason, it now looks almost as if they have implicitly admitted wrongdoing.
Prime Minister Takaichi, who had been deeply frustrated by the prefectural assembly’s vague and evasive handling of the situation, issued a strong directive: In next year’s unified local elections, the LDP will not endorse a single Fukuoka prefectural assembly member under the current circumstances. There are nearly 50 of them, yet she declared zero endorsements.
This kind of decisive action is something that Ishiba—who dragged out his resignation with endless excuses—or Kishida—whose statements were often unclear and hard to understand—could never have done. It is a political decision only Takaichi could make.
For now, the final endorsements will depend on the results of the third‑party committee that the prefectural assembly is about to establish. But depending on the findings, fewer than 10% of the current 49 LDP members may end up being endorsed.
Why? Because recently, when the assembly was supposed to vote on a resolution evaluating Kurauchi’s conduct as a legislator—the very core of the scandal—the 49 LDP members collectively refused to vote and postponed the decision. To the people of Fukuoka, this looked like the LDP assembly group was protecting Kurauchi’s faction as an organization. It was essentially a betrayal of public trust.
Realizing how serious this was, Prime Minister Takaichi acted immediately and declared: “Unless these issues are resolved, we will not endorse virtually any of the Fukuoka prefectural assembly members.” This was a bold decision that only Takaichi—now prime minister and a woman known for her quick, clear judgment—could make. No previous male prime minister, including the late Abe, could have done this. Her political instincts are truly remarkable.
The LDP has already suffered two consecutive major election defeats due to the Abe‑faction slush fund scandal. That allowed the Constitutional Democratic Party and other left‑leaning parties to gain ground. Although the rise of the Takaichi administration has dramatically shifted the political landscape, it would be disastrous if her government were dragged down by a local money scandal at this stage.
These remnants of the old, cunning LDP establishment must be dealt with decisively. Using the prime minister’s exclusive authority over endorsements to dismantle the organization if necessary is the right move to remove this political “tumor.” In that sense, this decision deserves extremely high praise.
I have never held local assembly members—from prefectural assemblies down to village councils—in high regard. Looking around, there are only a handful who possess common sense and intellectual maturity. Local assemblies are full of disappointingly low‑level individuals. And the governors, mayors, and town chiefs who align themselves with them are not much better.
The current governor of Fukuoka is a prime example. Sensing that Kurauchi’s downfall put him at a disadvantage, he immediately shifted into self‑preservation mode, earning continued public disapproval. He will likely lose the next election.
Fortunately, some opposition parties have already collapsed due to self‑destruction, and others that repeatedly merge and split without any guiding principles seem unable to unify. So it’s unlikely that any force capable of challenging the Takaichi administration will emerge soon.
If Takaichi successfully handles this local assembly scandal, the LDP’s overall credibility may remain intact. It would be a serious problem for the country if the LDP government were to lose public trust now and plunge politics back into uncertainty—especially when the world is already in turmoil.
For now, I strongly hope the government will quickly implement policies that directly affect people’s lives, such as reducing the consumption tax on food to 1% for two years. That is my sincere wish as an ordinary citizen.
Yesterday, I went to Komatsushima’s “Sushi-zume Fishing Port” to fish for cutlassfish. Since going late would mean losing my spot, I decided to head out a little earlier. After preparing my rods and gear, it was still bright outside, so my wife and I set up two chairs beside the car and relaxed for a while. That’s when an unfamiliar old man quietly appeared from the side.
“Catching anything?”
That simple question marked the beginning of a long conversation with what I now call the Tuna Old Man.
At first, I thought he was just one of the usual bored old guys around here—those who ride up on bicycles or small trucks and casually ask anyone, “Are they biting?” But this Tuna Old Man was on a completely different level.
Maybe it was because I’m an excellent fishing interviewer (´∀｀*) or because my questions were spot-on, but he soon began sharing one boastful fishing story after another.
This man is now 81 years old. He quit fishing about twenty years ago and hasn’t fished at all since. He said he just happened to stop by this port today and would head to a nearby hot spring afterward.
When I asked why he quit fishing, he said he had already mastered it. The final trigger that made him stop was quite interesting.
He once traveled all the way from Tokushima to Ōma in Aomori Prefecture, famous for its giant single-hook tuna fishing. He chartered a fishing boat all by himself for a full week—sometimes up to ten days—trying to catch a tuna. After all that, he didn’t catch a single one. His dream of becoming a tuna master was crushed, and that’s when he quit fishing altogether.
And the charter fee was insane—250,000 yen per day. If he chartered the boat for ten days, that alone would cost 2.5 million yen. He went multiple times without catching anything, so including travel and lodging, he probably spent over 10 million yen just on tuna fishing.
To make matters worse, on the exact same boat with the same captain, just one week before his charter, the late actor Tatsuo Umemiya—famous for catching huge tuna and marlin—landed a tuna worth over 5 million yen. That only fueled the old man’s desire to catch one even more.
But no matter how many times he spent huge sums of money to go back, he never caught a single tuna. Eventually, like a car’s speedometer hitting its limit, he simply quit fishing altogether.
Now, a brief digression.
I didn’t even know you could privately charter a tuna boat in Ōma, so his story sounded fresh. But I doubted the price—250,000 yen per day seemed way too high. After returning home, I asked AI about it and learned that Ōma has both charter and shared-ride systems. The typical rate for a private charter is 100,000–120,000 yen per day.
I’ve fished from boats myself, and I know an old man named S who used to charter a boat every week off Muroto in Kochi to chase yellowtail. Even then, the rate was about 30,000 yen per day. So even for tuna, 250,000 yen felt excessive. But considering the actual Ōma rates, maybe 250,000 yen isn’t impossible—after all, if you catch one big tuna like Umemiya did, you could make your money back.
Still, it’s nothing like what you see on New Year’s TV specials. Even if you burn heavy fuel for eight hours a day and run around the Ōma offshore grounds nonstop, it’s normal to not hook even one tuna.
Now, back to the main story.
Besides tuna, this man’s fishing life seems to have been entirely devoted to fishing since his youth. He once caught over 100 ayu in a single day on the Yoshino River using traditional “tomo-zuri” methods. In “hae fishing” (small fish like baby sardines), he produced results that threatened even the masters of that field.
He even owned a 50,000-yen ayu rod from Gamakatsu, showing just how serious he was.
I missed hearing about some of his other fishing adventures, but it’s clear his life revolved around fishing. I also heard about his main occupation, which supported his livelihood, but I’ll refrain from writing that here. In any case, despite spending so much money on fishing, his life didn’t fall apart because he avoided gambling and focused solely on fishing—and because his main job provided a solid income.
Eventually, the Tuna Old Man kept talking so much that my wife began to look bored. So the excellent interviewer (me) decided to wrap up the conversation. The old man seemed satisfied and cheerfully said, “Well then, good luck,” before heading off.
Once he left, it was already dark, so we returned to our own fishing—cutlassfish for me and sabiki fishing for my wife—rather than tuna fishing. WWW
And of course, even after hearing all that tuna talk, we didn’t go to a conveyor-belt sushi place to eat tuna afterward. You won’t find Ōma tuna at Sushirō or Hama Sushi anyway… (ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾋｬﾋｬ
