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disappears inside a warren of multistory hotels, restaurants
and dive shops crisscrossed by a maze of walkways, paths
and blind alleys cluttered with indecipherable signage.
Without Shingo we would have been totally lost; instead
he has us underwater within an hour.
As expected, much of the bay is a mess. We are 20
feet down the sand slope before the visibility breaks in
our favor. By 40 feet it has improved enough for us to
concentrate on the animals. Unlike Hachijo’s volcanic
shoreline that has plenty of hiding holes to attract sea
life, open sand bottoms offer few safe havens. But as
always, life adapts. Over the ages a thriving community
of crustaceans, mollusks and worms has evolved to
live beneath the surface. To combat all the burying and
burrowing, predators came up with some nifty tricks
of their own. The pair of searobins we encounter at
70 feet are a prime example. The delicate rays of their
ventral fins have transformed into claws for raking
animals out of the bottom, and their pectoral fins have
grown into wings flared to exaggerate their size.
While swimming back up the slope we run into
an assortment of boat hulls and other nautical trash
sunk over decades as fish attractors. They have done
their job well. Through 10 feet of haze we see fish
everywhere inside the sanctuaries. It’s a kaleidoscope
of species different from the Caribbean or Indonesia or
even from the fish we discovered at Hachijo earlier this
week. Diving, like Paris, is truly a moveable feast.
The next morning the weather is worse, but Shingo
is upbeat. He has been checking around and believes
he has the bearing on a juvenile John dory, a species
we have to look up in a field guide to know what he’s
talking about. In the world of Japanese fish watchers,
this is a trophy — a piece of pop art with spines like
spears and a big bullseye tattooed on its side. We
eventually find our fish at 50 feet. But afterward
everyone agrees it’s time to move on.
Futo, the only other dive park open, is a two-hour
drive east across the mountainous peninsula. On the
way, Shingo keeps our minds off the bad weather with
tales of pinecone fish and the possibility of finding a
baby horn shark. When we arrive, fishermen are hauling
boats onto shore, and the few divers around are heading
back up the slope. A motorized cart takes us to a staging
area where a guide rope leading down a concrete ramp
disappears into chest-high rollers. We are able to sneak
in three dives before the growing storm surge forces us
out of the water the following afternoon.
By nature we are a happy bunch, but that evening
while sitting around a table in our hotel restaurant
enjoying a third tokkuri of sake, we’re all feeling
especially good. Even though the edge of the typhoon
howls outside, for the first time in two weeks no one
feels obliged to check on or even mention the weather.
It’s as if all the fretting and anxiety from our dashing
about for two weeks went up in smoke with the stroke
of a magician’s wand. Only good memories remain.
After two more days in Tokyo, I head home with a
tailwind and a new adage to spout, à la Yogi Berra: “A
trip doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect.”
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