One More Week

So I've been studying Japanese for the past 9 months now.  I don't really feel like I'm improving at the rate I would like to be, but considering that I come from a country that doesn't use chinese characters I'm not surprised.  It's a real uphill struggle to learn them, but without knowing the first thousand or so reading is a real chore.

I was told that it gets easier after learning the first hundred.  This turned out to be untrue, but didn't surprise me on account of people suggesting that Japanese is a logical language.  It's as logical as any other language with thousands of years of history, which is to say it's not.  At the very least it might be considered consistent, which is a step up from English which is wildly inconsistent in so many ways.

Anyway, I've been banging on about learning Japanese for so long that I'm sure everyone is completely bored of it, so I shall move on.

I went fishing again.  This time I caught a boatload of catfisheses.  I think I've got the hang of float fishing that one particular river, and I'm making headway into legering it too.  The later will require some kind of floating bait I think, because the bottom is incredibly silty and the weight will often sink deep into the mud.  This leaves the bait potentially buried in the crud and away from enquiring mouths.  I'm sure a popup boilie would work well, so I'm investigating popup recipes currently.  Or at least, I will after the JLPT N2 exam this Sunday.  That's the exam that will yield a 'business level Japanese,' qualification, showing employers that I'm not a complete novice when it comes to the language.  I'm not going to pass the test this Summer, I'm just not there yet, but come the Winter exam I expect to be in a much better position.

I don't know how that exam talk snuck in there, but back to the fishing:

Not a fish, but on a slow day I went caught a few crabs for fun.  I love crab fishing!

It's incredible just how ugly catfish are.  It's like someone went out of their way to design the ugliest fish imaginable, giving it fitting traits to boot.  I'm told people eat these things.

The first five I pulled out of the river were small, but the thrill of being able to catch something with some kind of regularity was more than enough to make up for the size.  I ended up floating a cockle at about 2.5 metres, letting the flow of the river take it to a shallow spot.  I ground baited that spot, then had to wait all of 5 minutes for the bites to start.  It took me a few hours to get this tactic down, but once I found the depth and a few good spots they were easy picking.

They're awfully spiny too, I got stabbed a couple of times.

The leger was a case of wanging a weight upstream and leaving it.  I had a heavy weight left free on the line, so anything taking the bait wouldn't be fighting the weight.  I left the reel in free spool mode or whatever it's called, and let the fish hook themselves.  I'm told this is a good way to catch the bigger fish out there, but I didn't have a way of weeding out the smaller ones, so of the two I caught this way, neither were more than 40 cm long.  The problem with catfish is their mouths are as big as the fish is long, so even if I were to use the biggest boilies the small fish would still be big enough to nab them.  I might try boilies at some point in the future though because you never know, it might be an effective deterrent for the tiddlers.


With both leger and float I found that catfish are harder to catch than, say, carp.

A had a fair number on the line that managed to wriggle free, and I had a fair number of bites that didn't connect.  I think they're more wary by nature and don't swallow the whole bait immediately like other species do.  This might just be poor technique on my part (highly likely) but even the leger that is theoretically self-hooking had to be taken up pretty quickly, otherwise they'd get away.

That was not the case with this fish though.

This monster fish, measuring 3 hands from thumb to little finger, and weighing a beastly 7kg (15lbs) absolutely devoured whatever I had on the end of the float at that time (I forget).  I was using a cheap 7 ft telescopic rod of questionable quality, on a cheap reel, both designed for light lure fishing all day and as such, both incredibly lightweight.  Needless to say, there was a lot of involuntary unspooling of line to keep the rod from bending too much, and to keep the line intact.  I use heavy line in the 8lbs range because I'm not a very subtle person, but I was still worried about the knots and whatknot.

It had a big fat belly which I did take a picture of, but I was panicking and didn't get a clear shot.  With the lightness of the rod and reel, it took a fairly long time to bring in.  It was great fun, and with this I think I'm hooked.  At the very least, I'll go back to this river whenever I have cause to.

In non fish related dealings, I'm growing a lot of stuff this year.

I've got a strawberry pot that's growing out nicely.  There are always four or five flowers on the go, which gives me a strawberry every other day.  This will hopefully pick up going into Summer as things get even warmer.

I've got a sunflower in a pot.  The head fell off almost as soon as it started growing, which has given rise to a frankenflower that has half a dozen flowers growing in weird positions all over the stem.  My plan is to have at least one yield seeds, which will hopefully give me a self-sustaining sunflower situation.

This picture is from 3 weeks ago.  The plant hasn't really grown, but there is a wicked pepper on there at the moment.

These flowers belong to a pepper.  There's an amazing green pepper growing on there right now, which I'll get round to taking a picture of at some point.

Foot for scale

Finally, the spuds.  They are ginormous, and threatening to take over the whole balcony.  This picture is also a couple of weeks old, and you can't really walk past them without doing damage now.  They're growing over the top of the railing, which I can't say I expected when I tentatively threw the spuds in a couple of months ago.

And that's about it.  I've just been studying mainly.  Not a lot else has happened, but I'm going to try and get out and about with the camera now that the main exams are nearly finished.

I've finished archiving all my analogue photographs, and am moving onto my Grandads film and slides.  I've just checked, and I have 2,000 film pictures of my own scanned now - which is significantly smaller than Grandads collection, so it may take some time.

I chose to do mine first so I could get a hang of using the scanner, colour profiles and all that nonsense.  Hopefully I'll find a few gems once I start, but we'll see.

I caught a fish!

Before I start, there are a couple of things I should point out.  Firstly, I never thought I'd ever actually catch a fish, so I didn't have a net.  I had to lean over the edge and pull it out by the mouth and tail, which isn't great.  I made sure I didn't just support all the weight by the mouth though, so that probably wasn't particularly harmful to the fish.

Secondly, because I never thought I'd ever actually catch a fish, I don't have a mat.  I put it on the grass, but it was half grass and half concrete.  Definitely not great for the fish.

Thirdly, I was shaking so much after hauling it out, that it took ages to get the hook out.  It barely nibbled the hook, so getting it out should have been a piece of cake.  Unfortunately it took ages.  I'll definitely be better about it next time.

Luckily, I pulled out a catfish.  They are hardly dainty, and this one swam off with great haste once it was back in the water.

Two hand lengths

From head to the tip of the tail was about two hand lengths.  I have literally no idea how much it weighed, and I have no idea what a decent sized fish is around these parts.  I just checked, and it was probably a smidge under 40cm.  I caught it on spam, which was a real bastard to keep on the hook.  Next time I'll take a smorgasbord of disgusting and smelly nonsense that humans would never want to eat, just like spam, to throw in instead.

The river was incredibly active, with (I would guess) at least 3 different types of fish all flopping about on the surface.  No idea what any of them were, but they were going strong until at least 10.30 pm.  They all seem to love spam.  I had probably half a dozen enormous bites, but I wasn't quick enough to haul in more than the one fish.

Exceptionally happy with the one fish, having offered up a float, weight and 15 metres of line to Poseidon earlier in the day.

The score so far:  Water Gods 5, me 1.