Goto Islands, Part 2: Oysters

Click here to see Part 1 of our trip to Japan’s Goto Islands.

We heard about Goto Island’s famous oysters and decided to send some to Aya’s parents in Osaka. We stopped at a seafood company called Maruoto and the day took an amazing turn.

Maruoto specializes in big, beautiful oysters.

We had only been in the store for a couple of minutes when Shin, the owner’s son, offered to open some samples for us. They were huge, but so delicate and gently briny, like a sea water custard.

That was just the beginning of what turned into an amazing afternoon. Read on to see more.

Shin invited us to take a look at their processing plant, just a couple of kilometers down the road. It was an old-world wooden shack on floats, with rubber-clad workers inside sorting and cleaning oysters on tables.

Then Shin brought over an open boat and took us on a tour around the local bays to see their oyster farms. Click to see larger images with descriptions.

At the processing plant, the young oysters are cleaned and sized.

The one year-olds are put into special racks special racks and returned to the water for another year.

Shin took us out in his skiff to see his oyster farms.

The first stop was a multi-net tuna farm owned by a friend of Shin’s.

Each cylindrical net cage extends over 25m down into the water and is home to around 50 large tuna.

Shin’s company Maruoto has a few farms like this one, tucked into protected areas among the small islands.

Oysters are seeded onto ropes and allowed to grow for a year.

Shin hauls up a rope to show the young oysters.

For their second year, the oysters are taken off the rope and put into individual pockets on wire frames where they grow into uniform size and shape.

These beauties are about 18 months old. They will grow for another 6 months before being harvested.

The tour was such an unexpected and generous treat, and so in keeping with what we found to be the way of life on the islands.

Once we got back to Osaka, we ordered another box of oysters from Shin.

They arrived the next day, and were every bit as delicious as we remembered.