Even more species hunting adventures in Japan: Kyoto.

Arriving at Osaka's Itami airport in the afternoon, Ryan's girlfriend Xin Yun's flight arrived at about the same time, so we met up with her at baggage reclaim and headed into the city. After checking into our accommodation, the four of us headed out to spend the evening wandering around Dotonbori, soaking up the atmosphere, snacking throughout the night on Kobe beef skewers, molten hot takoyaki, tasty gyoza, incredibly crispy, yet tender chicken karaage and some super sweet strawberry mochi and ice cream.

You can't visit Osaka and not spend an evening strolling around Dotonbori.

Ryan and Xin Yun splash some cash on some premium Kobe beef skewers.

The restaurants all try to outdo each other with huge 3D signage.

Before calling it a night, the four of us rode the unusually shaped Don Quijote Ferris "Wheel".

The next day, we headed south to explore the vibrant area of Shinsekai. After walking through Tennoji Park, we had some tasty yakisoba for lunch and then went up Tsutenkaku Tower, also known as Hitachi Tower.

Tsutenkaku Tower from the pond in Tennoji Park.

Tennoji Park from the top of Tsutenkaku Tower.

Don’t look down! Ryan and Xin Yun stand out on a glass floored platform at the end of a walkway that juts out near the top of the tower. 

Exiting Tsutenkaku Tower, we wandered south down Shinsekai's main shopping street, where we passed some dog owners who had dressed up their pets for some reason and were pushing them around in prams. One was wearing a clown costume that I’d later discover was that of Kuidaore Tarō, an iconic clown and the unofficial mascot of Osaka's vibrant Dotonbori district.

You see some strange things in Japan! The dog didn't seem to mind.

Next, we visited the Shinsekai Magic Café & Bar, where we enjoyed a few drinks and an hour of close up magic performed by three different magicians. Tricks involving playing cards, coins, rope and Rubik's Cubes had us all scratching our heads and if you're ever in Osaka I'd highly recommend the experience. By this point, we were quite hungry, and a restaurant where you can fish for your dinner was too good an opportunity to miss!

In this restaurant you can try to catch various different types of fish and then have them prepared in several different ways. 

There were plenty of fish swimming around in the water surrounding the boat shaped dining areas.

Most of the other diners seemed to be struggling to catch their dinner. Being experienced anglers, Ryan and I both caught a red bream almost straight away! Good bait presentation gave us an edge I think! We decided we wouldn't add the species to our trip's tally! 

Handing our catch to the restaurant staff, we were soon enjoying the two fish we caught four different ways. My favourite was the sashimi. 

After our delicious meal, we spent the remainder of the evening wandering around, admiring all the colourful signs around Shinsekai before heading back to the apartment via Nipponbashi Denden Town, where we checked out some of its interesting shops, including one that sold Pokémon cards.

This illuminated lantern style display above a kushikatsu restaurant in Shinsekai was very impressive.

The next day, we caught a train north to spend the day in Kyoto. Ryan and I took minimal fishing tackle with us, just in case an opportunity to do some fishing could be slotted into our busy schedule. With way more places to see than we could possibly have done in one day, we had to choose which places we visited and which we did not. The first place on our itinerary was Kiyomizu-dera, a Buddhist temple located up in the hills to the east of the city. From Kyoto Station we decided to walk there as taking public transport wasn't going to save us that much time, and it was a lovely day.

With the leaves turning red, the views of the temple and Kyoto beyond were stunning

Heading back down the hill, we walked down the picturesque narrow streets of Sannenzaka, passing the Hōkan-ji Temple and its impressive Yasaka Pagoda, before wandering through the grounds of the much quieter Kenninji Temple.

The imposing Yasaka Pagoda of Hōkan-ji Temple.

In stark contrast to the rest of our morning walk, Kenninji Temple had hardly any tourists visiting it, which was nice.

We did intend to visit Nishiki Market to get some street food style snacks for lunch, but when we reached the eastern bank of the Kamo River, we stopped underneath a bridge crossing it to get out of the sun and a plan was formulated for how we would spend the afternoon. We'd already eaten some onigiri in the morning, so in order to fit what we wanted to do in, we opted to skip lunch in favour of a short fishing session instead. In no time at all, Ryan and I were freelining bread flake to see if we could tempt the resident fish.

What a beautiful place to fish!

The Kamo River contains a good head of common carp, but I was hoping to locate and catch my first ever Japanese barbel if I'm being honest. All we saw as we moved up and down the concrete blocks at the water's edge were groups of common carp moving around the pool. With no sign of any Japanese barbel, when a large common carp slowly swam up and took my bait from just below the surface, I was glad it did. The battle that ensued on my Nebula Rock Rover was something else! Being patient, and letting the fish take line when it made surging runs, it was at least ten minutes before I had the fish's head on the surface and beaten. Lillian was by my side, ready with my net, and a cracking fish was carefully drawn into it.

What a beauty! Easily the biggest fish I've caught on such light tackle.

Ryan hooked a couple of fish too, but sadly both threw the hook. Before we left, I tied on a tanago hook and caught a tiny dark chub from the small pools of water in amongst the concrete blocks we had been fishing from.

Every species counts, and this tiny fish had added another species to our tally!

Packing up, we caught a train and then a bus to visit the Golden Pavilion in northern Kyoto. For some reason, Lillian and I failed to visit it the last time we were in Kyoto, and we were there for several days back in 2018! Lillian really wanted to make sure we got there this time, and when we walked through the grounds and the Golden Pavilion came into view, it didn't disappoint.

Set in beautiful gardens, next to a pond, the top two levels of the Golden Pavilion are covered in actual gold leaf!

The next stop on our mini tour of Kyoto was the Monkey Park in Arashiyama. Due to the time and the relative locations, we decided to get a taxi to make sure we had ample time to arrive, climb the hill to the park and spend a reasonable amount of time at the top. The hike up into the hills is a bit of a slog, but when you get up there and see all the Japanese macaque there, it's well worth it.

This was about as close as I got to one out in the open. You're not supposed to get within two metres of them or look directly in their eyes.

In the centre of the open area at the top of the hill, you can enter a small building where you can buy some fruit and nuts. These can be fed to the monkeys through a caged opening.

Making our way back down the hill, we headed over the wooden bridge that crosses over the Katsura River and headed through the town of Arashiyama to visit the famous bamboo grove there. By this point the light was beginning to fade, and just as we reached the middle of the incredibly popular attraction, it started raining, so we hastily turned around, headed to the station and caught a train to Gion, Kyoto's geisha district. There we strolled south, enjoying the beautiful traditional architecture, and then headed for something to eat before returning to the station to take a train back to Osaka.

Having skipped lunch, we settled for some filling, and very tasty, Osaka style okonomiyaki.

We'd made quite a hectic start to our stay in Osaka, and our day trip to Kyoto had been pretty full on too. A generous portion of house special okonomiyaki washed down with a few beers was what we all needed I think! The next day, we had a bit more of a relaxing itinerary planned, including a little spot of fishing.

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 9.

On our final evening on Okinawa, after doing some of our packing, Ryan and I popped out for an hour or so, for one last session. We drove five minutes from our apartment, to the fenced off concrete piers down by the South Steps Dive Site in Chatan. Taking minimal tackle and a few raw prawns, our targets were nocturnal species, and that’s exactly what we caught.

First up was this redcoat, a species of squirrelfish found all the way from the western Pacific to the Mediterranean Sea. I caught my first in Singapore last year.

I also caught my first ever five-lined cardinalfish. 

This solitary pinecone soldierfish was also my first ever. 

I’d already caught a striped large-eye bream earlier in the trip. 

My last fish on Okinawa were two iridescent cardinalfish. My first ever also!

Ryan’s final fish on Okinawa was this samurai squirrelfish.

So, our Okinawa species hunting had come to an end. With the remainder of our packing still to do, we headed back to the apartment. Despite quite a lot of wet weather during our stay on Okinawa, we’d managed to do a reasonable amount of fishing, had caught lots of fish, and had racked up almost eighty species between the two us, which was a great achievement. Adding the species we caught in Tokyo and Enoshima, I wondered if reaching one hundred was possible. The following day we were flying to Osaka and Ryan’s girlfriend Xin Yun was joining us from Singapore for the last part of our trip. We had a busy schedule planned, with lots of sightseeing and day trips to other places during both our five days in Osaka, and when we returned to Tokyo for a couple of days before flying home, so fishing opportunities would be limited. Reaching one hundred species would be tough, but we were keen to try and catch a few more to try and achieve it!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 8.

On our last day on Okinawa, we got up reasonably early and began the drive up to Cape Hedo. To break up the journey a little bit, we took a slight detour after leaving the Okinawa Expressway, and headed to Untenbaru Port on Yagaji Island. As forecast, the sky was pretty dull again and shortly after arriving and setting up our tackle, a passing heavy shower had us taking cover in the hire-car. It didn't last too long thankfully, and we were soon fishing, but it was pretty poor to be honest, with not much biting.

Untenbaru Port on Yagaji Island. Probably the least productive spot we tried during our time on Okinawa.

Before we decided to head over the Kouri Bridge to fish in Kouri Island's port, I did manage to catch a couple of fish. One of them was an addition to our trip tally, so visiting the spot wasn't a complete waste of time

A small saw-jawed monocle bream was not a new species for me, but it was the first one of the trip.

Not my first of the trip, but it's always cool to catch a butterflyfish.

A short drive later, we were back fishing out of the boot of the hire car in Kouri Island's port. There was another angler already fishing there when we arrived. Float fishing small shrimps under a float and piling in ground bait around it, his endeavours went some way to explain why there seemed to be less fish around at the area we had fished so successfully a couple of days previously. I really struggled to catch much, with a brown damselfish being the only potential new species for me. Ryan hooked a large puffer, but lost it on the surface. A short while later, his efforts were rewarded with a few clownfish, which I was quite envious about.

What a difference a couple of days make, and a few kilograms of ground bait a few metres out to our right!

It was my turn to catch an undescribed species of damselfish. This one being different to the one Ryan had caught earlier in the trip.

Ryan caught a couple of Nemo's cousins! This one is a yellowtail clownfish.

Aware that we still had to drive up to the most northerly point on the main island, and also because the fishing wasn't great, we didn't stay on Kouri Island too long and were soon back on the road again. About an hour later, we arrived at Cape Hedo. It was a stunning spot, but unfortunately a strong onshore wind and a swell breaking over the rocks below the cliffs ruled out any fishing there.

Cape Hedo was not really fishable. Not with ultra light tackle anyway!

Luckily, we had passed a nice looking port about five minutes before we got to Cape Hedo, so we decided just to head back there. It was quite overcast when we arrived at Ginama Fish Harbour, and it looked like it could rain at any moment, but we parked the car and walked around the harbour's inner area to fish in its entrance and down the harbour's inner walls. The fishing was pretty good, and we added a few more species to our trip tally.

Nice and sheltered.

I caught a vagabond butterflyfish,..

... a few dusky farmerfish,..

...and a couple of tomato clownfish.

For some reason, Ryan was again somehow managing to find every possible snag on the bottom and spent a bit of time retying his rig. When he did manage to avoid the snags, he pulled up his second thicklip wrasse species of the trip.

Ryan's blackeye thicklip.

Ryan then decided to give some lures a go and tied on a luminous prawn. Casting it out into the centre of the harbour, he worked it back towards him, close to the bottom. Meanwhile, I stuck with fishing chunks of prawn down the harbour wall. With a fair amount of bait left to use up, I began cutting up a few prawns into small pieces and throwing them in to see if I could attract some more fish to the area. After a while I got a quite violent take and struck into something a little bit feisty. After a brief battle, a small grouper came to the surface.

My first ever honeycomb grouper. Ryan really wanted to catch a grouper, so it was his turn to be a little bit jealous!

No for too long though! Shortly afterwards, a couple of them took a liking to his brightly coloured prawn lure and smashed it! He was over the moon to get his first ever grouper.

We carried on fishing for a while longer, and somehow despite the sky looking like it was going to burst at any moment, it stayed dry. I caught two more species for the first time, and we spotted a juvenile threadfin trevally swimming past, which was very cool.

My first ever narrowstripe cardinalfish,...

...and streamlined spinefoot. My second rabbitfish species of the trip.

It was cool to see this juvenile threadfin trevally swimming by with its extremely long, filamentous dorsal and anal fin tips.

Before we left, we took a walk around the harbour's outer breakwater. We had a few casts out into the middle of the harbour, but it was very snaggy. As I was tying up another rig, Ryan called over to say that he'd spotted a weird fish on the bottom. Going over to where he was, I immediately recognised it as a lionfish! We both tried to catch it, but it just wasn't interested, eventually drifting off down into the rocks out of sight. It would have been great to spend more time trying to catch it, but with a two-hour drive back to Chatan to make, as well as packing our cases for our flight to Osaka the following day to do, we had to leave. Besides, I also wanted to try and squeeze in a short fishing session after dark when we got back to Chatan, if time allowed!

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 7.

A short drive later, we arrived at Cape Zanpa. If anything, the weather seemed to be improving and the likelyhood of any rain for the next hour or so looked very minimal. Parking the hire car and walking up to the cape's lighthouse, we clambered over the jaggy volcanic rocks behind it, found a nice looking spot, carefully climbed down the rocks, and started fishing.

Cape Zanpa's volcanic rock cliffs drop off into very deep water.

Being the responsible adult, I volunteered to climb down first.

A slight swell was running, but despite climbing down on to a small rocky platform, we were still fairly high up above the surface, out of harm's way. Fishing larger hooks with chunks of raw prawn, we were both getting bites straight away. Smaller fish were quickly stripping our hooks bare, but eventually we hooked a few slightly bigger fish. Quite a few Indo-Pacific sergeant were caught to begin with, but then we started catching some very cool species.

Not really what we were hoping to catch from the deep water beneath us!

Ryan then caught this stocky hawkfish. I really wanted to catch one too, but sadly did not.

He then caught a stunning sunset wrasse. I was jealous of this capture too!

Then it was my turn to catch a couple of really cool fish in the shape of this scrawled filefish,..

...and this beautiful pastel ringwrasse!

It had actually turned out to be a nice day weather wise, with little sign of the forecast rain arriving any time soon. The variety of species was good and we really enjoying our fishing. After a while it went a little bit quiet, but before we ran out of bait, we caught three different species of triggerfish and another filefish species as well.

I caught this stunning orange-lined triggerfish,..

...a couple of half-moon triggerfish,..

...and this honeycomb filefish.

Ryan caught a couple of reef triggerfish.

Heading back to the hire car, we drove north, stopping at a konbini where we grabbed some snacks and a pack of frozen raw prawns. By the time we arrived at Maeganeku Fishing Port, the sky had changed completely to being totally overcast, and it looked like it would start pouring down at any moment. I spotted a large group of sapphire devil down the side of the wall, as well as some other very colourful tropical fish. Knowing that Ryan really wanted to catch a sapphire devil, I gave him a tanago hook to increase his chances, and he caught one pretty quickly.

I fished blind near the bottom, while Ryan sight fished for sapphire devil a few feet below the surface.

Mission accomplished! Made easier with a tanago hook!

Also fishing with tiny hooks, I was rewarded with my second yellowfin surgeonfish of the trip.

We'd only been at this spot for maybe fifteen minutes when the rain started. Very quickly, turning from fairly light to very heavy. Satisfied with getting about six hours of fishing done at the three different venues that day, we headed back to the apartment. The following day was our last on Okinawa and Ryan was keen to visit Cape Hedo all the way up at the top of the island. It looked like a promising spot, but we would be at the mercy of the weather again, and the forecast yet again contained lots of rain.

Tight lines, Scott.

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More species hunting adventures on Okinawa: Part 6.

In the morning, on our fourth day, we picked up some ragworm and raw prawns from a tackle shop in Chatan, and drove to the northern end of the Kadena Sea Wall. This was another spot I fished the last time I visited Okinawa, the large concrete steps there offering comfortable fishing over a shallow reef. According to the weather forecast, we had a three-hour window before it started raining, so we were keen to make the most of it.

Ryan and I resume our species hunt!

The cloud cover was a little more scattered, with some blue sky visible, which was a nice change. As you would expect, casting out onto cleaner patches located next to rocky structures, soon produced a couple of wrasse species, both of which had stunning markings.

My first ever threespot wrasse,..

…and a few Pacific dusky wrasse too, a species I’ve encountered before in Phuket.

Dropping my rig closer in, just past the edge of the bottom step, I was hoping to perhaps locate some goby or blenny species, but this change in tactics produced a few different species from other families instead.

A couple of dory snapper,..

…quite a lot of little scissortail sergeant,..

…and my first ever pink-belly wrasse.

Casting out near rougher areas threw up a few more wrasse and a couple of triggerfish species for me. Ryan meanwhile had decided to give bait fishing a break and spent some time fishing small paddletail lures over the area. After having the tails nipped off of them a few times, his lure was taken by a fully committed cigar wrasse.

Triggerfish are awesome. Blackbelly triggerfish...

...and whitebanded triggerfish both have beautiful markings.

I was quite jealous of Ryan’s cigar wrasse. A very elongated species of wrasse, he caught it on an HTO Pathfinder Sandeel lure.

Fishing away, I then spotted a really weird looking tropical fish hovering over a small rocky area. Flicking my bait in its vicinity, it showed no interest whatsoever, but my efforts did see me catch a few more pink-belly wrasse and also two more new species whilst trying in vain to tempt it.

My first ever striped monocle bream,...

...was followed by my first ever thumbprint emperor.

Before we knew it, the three-hour weather window had come and gone. With only a few clouds in the sky, we were confident we’d be able to carry on fishing, but we decided to head a little further up the west coast to try our luck from some cliffs, fishing into some much deeper water.

Tight lines, Scott.

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