Dining with Ama freedivers in Japan

The Ama are female freedivers who have gathered pearls, lobsters and shellfish in Japan's coastal waters for millennia, and who feature heavily in local folklore. There were some 6,000 of these "women of the ocean" as recently as the 1940s; but owing in part to the depletion of their harvests, and the growing difficulty of making a living from diving, numbers are now down to around 1,200. 

Most of them live and work on the beautiful Ise-Shima peninsula, on the south coast of central Japan, said David Coggins in the Financial Times. The G7 summit was held here in 2016, near the important Shinto shrine of Ise Jingu, but the Ama are concentrated on the peninsula's more remote southern side, around the lushly forested islands and inlets of Ago Bay. And some now supplement their incomes by inviting tourists to accompany them on their fishing trips, and join them in feasts of the catch afterwards. I stayed by the bay at Amanemu, a resort with minimalist design, "superb" modern Japanese cuisine, and outdoor onsen (thermal baths). 

The journey there from Tokyo was enjoyable – a Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya, and then a "sleepy but charming" local train to the end of the line. From the nearby coastal town of Shima, we went out in a boat with two Ama, Kimiyo and Naoko. Unlike Kissy Suzuki – the fictional Ama who is one of James Bond's lovers in "You Only Live Twice" – these women do not double as ninjas, but they do have a remarkable "unfussy, can-do attitude", and an extraordinary diving ability; they're able to plunge down into the cold waters for up to two minutes at a time, thanks to their special breathing technique. 

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Wearing the traditional, white Ama costume – including a head-wrap and scarf – Kimiyo served our simple dinner over an open grill in her small wooden house by the sea. The first course (a "long, dark and vaguely menacing" sea snail) was challenging, but the rest (scallops, squid and lobster, served with sticky rice and cold sake) was wonderful – a rare chance to "enjoy elemental pleasures unchanged by time".