Fishing in mid-summer in Japan...

Am enjoying the second last day of a week's holiday from work...

Had planned to work in the potager...

But the weather was simply too much to bear...

After working for an hour or so under the summer heat, I'd be all drenched up in sweat...

My body then tells me...

'Go to the sea!!' 

I was too feeble to fight this 'order'...

So, for the past few days, I was sea-bound...

I snorkled, I swam, I fished...

And can you believe that yours truly pulled out this colorful fish from the Japan Inland Sea?

The fish is called 'kyusen' in Japanese, and 'multicolorfin rainbowfish' in English...

I think the above specimen is the female version of the colorful male in the previous picture...

Near to the rocks I poked the fishing rod...

And woah... rockfish ('kasago' in Japanese) came a-biting...

Their big mouths mean that they normally swallow the hook wholesale...

And the rockfish turned into boiled fish during dinnertime...

Absolutely lovely with home-made loquat liqueur...

While not snorkeling or fishing, yours truly went hunting for shellfish...

Harvested twenty one mussels on one of those days...

I regretted taking too much as our self-imposed 'quota' is five mussels per person...

My partner casts her magic wand onto the shells, turning them into exquisite pasta...

We 'lengthened' the eating pleasure by spreading the meal out into two dinners...

Why... as we did not want to 'hurry' by over-consuming all the mussels in just one meal... 

Our quota: five mussels per person per meal...