Those of us that drove down in Akiko's car had to make a little trek to the beach...I think we parked in the wrong stop, which is amazing, because the walk was beautiful and fun. Akiko there, is Brent's wife. I don't know her too well, but she's pretty much amazing!!! Brent's cool too. I think he was my first friend in the Ken. (I might accidentally talk about the Ken a lot...so I'm working it in here....so Ken means Prefecture). "the Ken" would be our prefecture. :) aka. Yamaguchi Prefecture. 
This tent was set up for us when we got there. The table in front of the tent said ---"Here" foreigner. We were incredibly lucky for being able to get tickets to this. There are only a certain number of people that may participate...and many many Japanese people just couldn't get tickets. My supervisors friend tried REALLY hard to get tickets :( Lucky us! I really appreciate all that this club did for us. The organizers in this club just kept feeding us and feeding us and feeding us, and smiling at us, but not really talking to us that much. I guess they assumed we couldn't speak Japanese (they assumed right for me!)...but it was just so gracious of them, and I will always remember it. 
So we all (I think about 3000 people) had a chance to line up and in pairs carry a crate of shrimp down to the ocean. While we were eating lunch, people had been putting up nets about 20 meters into the shore, so that the shrimp would be stuck on shore :( We all lined up to be part of the opening ceremony where in crates, we carried the live shrimp out to the ocean, and dumped them in. There were 1000's and 1000's of shrimp swimming around. Then we all lined up, heard the gun shoot off, and booked it to the ocean. We carried a bag in one hand, and a gloved -other hand had to catch. 
Above: This is the gal that interviewed me. She first asked me in Japanese how many shrimp I caught. I understood the question. So I formed my hand into a zero, and put this zero on my forehead. haha. She then said in English "how many shrimp did you catch?". I said, "no, I understood! This is for zero! I caught zero shrimp, but I had a lot of fun!" This bit was put on the main news channel, so probably a million people or more saw me being an idiot with my zero shrimp. I only know that it was actually aired because an old friend from high school who is currently living in Tokyo facebooked me... "I just saw you on TV! You're in Japan too?" haha.
Above: Here, the actually shrimp catching is winding down....but people stayed in looking for them for a LONG time. I think 90% of the shrimp were caught in the first minute though... :)
NOOOO JAMIE NOOOOOO! At least peel it and dip it in Soy Sauce first! :)
Everyone handed in all the shrimp they caught, and the organizers (I'm not exactly sure who these organizers were! I think they were part of a Japanese club called "friends of foreigners"!) barbecued them up. Not all of them. Many we just dipped in soy sauce and ate raw. Fresh and raw. It was really really yummy. I don't think I've ever eaten raw shrimp before...Click on the video above, to see a short clip of what the shrimp catching looked like.
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