{"id":485,"date":"2017-09-15T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/?p=485"},"modified":"2018-03-06T19:31:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T03:31:55","slug":"goto-islands-part-2-oysters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/2017\/09\/15\/goto-islands-part-2-oysters\/","title":{"rendered":"Goto Islands, Part 2: Oysters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to see Part 1 of our trip to Japan’s Goto Islands.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Maruoto specializes in big, beautiful oysters.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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That was just the beginning of what turned into an amazing afternoon. Read on to see more.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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At the processing plant, the young oysters are cleaned and sized.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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The one year-olds are put into special racks special racks and returned to the water for another year.<\/div><\/div>
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Shin took us out in his skiff to see his oyster farms.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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The first stop was a multi-net tuna farm owned by a friend of Shin’s.<\/div><\/div>
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Each cylindrical net cage extends over 25m down into the water and is home to around 50 large tuna.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Shin’s company Maruoto has a few farms like this one, tucked into protected areas among the small islands.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Oysters are seeded onto ropes and allowed to grow for a year.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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Shin hauls up a rope to show the young oysters.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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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.<\/div><\/div><\/div>
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These beauties are about 18 months old. They will grow for another 6 months before being harvested.<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Once we got back to Osaka, we ordered another box of oysters from Shin.<\/p>\n

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They arrived the next day, and were every bit as delicious as we remembered.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Goto Islands, Part 2: Oysters”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[140,146,145,81,62,139,147,141,166],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-go","tag-boat","tag-deliver","tag-farm","tag-goto","tag-japan","tag-oyster","tag-seafood","tag-tour","tag-tuna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikedabarry.com\/gomakedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}