Another way of living - By Nick Joy

I have spent the last 20 days in Japan. Oh I know! My life is so hard, but then somebody has to do it. Having got that out of the way, I can reveal a complete and utter love of the country. My partner Nici and I have travelled extensively, in terms not only of geography, but also food.

Japan has so many different types of food that in 20 days we have only repeated a couple of times. It ranges from syabusyabu with wagyu beef, which is very expensive to okonmyaki, which has at its core cabbage and beansprouts.

I have been to Japan a good few times on business but this has been Nici’s first and I think she has found it as fascinating as I have. The culture is extremely polite and courteous, like Britain used to be. If you are lost or confused (a perfect description of me most of the time), someone will invariably come over and ask if they can help you. The smiles and welcome are genuine and the shyness in conversation enchanting.

The food that we recognise most in the UK is sushi or sashimi but there are many other types, some of which are delicious and some a bit testing. What is obvious is their respect for seafood and its value. Even bento boxes, a worker’s lunch often sold from machines, include fish. Fish is a core part of the average person’s diet.

The options range from the super-expensive fugu to salmon (almost exclusively Norwegian), which is relatively cheap. Fugu, which we have never tried, is a puffer fish with a poison gland that needs to be removed extremely carefully or death can occur. Despite this, it is very sought-after.

Due to translational issues, we have often eaten some fish without ever finding out what it was! In some ways this has added to the pleasure. Nearly always, they will tell you where the fish you are eating came from. Last night, for the first time, we tried local oysters from the south of Japan, which were delicious. We had two from different areas and the chef was genuinely interested to see which one we liked best. We ended up agreeing with his view which is hardly surprising.

My inability to speak Japanese restricts conversation. We have discussed the state of fish stocks and many other subjects around fish, and it is clear that government and the agencies here have a much more thoughtful approach.

Being guided around Matsumoto, an inland town, we were stunned to discover that in the drains beside the road there were rainbow trout and our guide fed them every day. I was stunned that the water quality in the drains was good enough for trout to survive, especially as they are so pollution- and oxygen-sensitive.

I asked him if he was feeding them with a view to eating them, but he said that he would not eat trout from the drains. This led to a conversation about angling and he said that over all of Japan angling is very regulated. In fact you can only fish two months of the year. Now please understand that this was a discussion with two people trying to understand each other, so it might be three months, but it is not a season as long as ours.

Asked about this short season, he mentioned the threat from angling to fish stocks. This man was not involved with the fish trade in any way but viscerally understood that the pressure on freshwater fish stocks is huge. The conversation highlighted exactly what is wrong with our system. We have influential people who have too much to gain by overexploitation, and government and agencies that do not wish to antagonise them.

There is another key element. In Japan, there is an acceptance that one of the pressures on stocks is the sheer number of people who wish to fish. Thus they ensure that the stocks are heavily protected. In the UK we look for anyone else to blame for the decline in stocks, and we still allow them to be exploited.

It seems to me that reducing the fishing season on threatened rivers would be a very good way to allow sport but also to ensure protection. I won’t hold my breath for sensible solutions to arrive, or for the idiots in government or the agencies to accept being challenged on the science.