Gratitude for tsunami aid sizzles at Tokyo grilled fish festival
In a suburb of Tokyo the sights, sounds — and smells — of autumn are alive and well as the Meguro no Sanma Matsuri festival sizzles into action.
Skilled chefs cooked sanma Pacific saury over a charcoal grill in Meguro Ward where participants got a free taste of the prized seasonal fish on Sunday.
Appetites were strong – this was the first time the event has been held since the pandemic started.
And given the drop in saury catches, the organisers had considered cancelling the festival for the third straight year. But the fishing community of Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture was eager to provide saury as a mark of gratitude for the Tokyo suburb’s help in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake-Tsunami, which devastated the town. Kesennuma and Meguro had allied as friendship cities just a year before the disaster struck.
This gratitude made the event possible, even if a month later than usual.
Because of the smaller catches — last year the total haul was only one-tenth of what it was 10 years earlier — only 1,000 saury were available, instead of the usual 5,000. The event still drew about 9,000 applications, showing its enduring popularity.
The Japan News/Yomiuri Shimbun
Asia News Network
