Toba

The ama dive with a whistle. Japan's traditional pearl-diving women — some still working into their seventies — plunge into cold Pacific currents wearing white cloth and little else, surfacing with a piercing exhale that carries across the water. In the ama-goya huts afterward, they grill abalone and turban shells over charcoal and tell stories about the sea.

Toba sits on Mie Prefecture's Shima Peninsula, facing the Pacific across Toba Bay. The city is the birthplace of cultured pearl farming — Mikimoto Kokichi produced the world's first cultured pearl on Mikimoto Pearl Island in 1893, and the museum there documents the technique that transformed the global jewellery industry. The ama free-diving tradition, practised along this coast for over 2,000 years, is preserved in working communities where women dive for abalone, sea urchin, and seaweed without scuba equipment. The Toba Sea-Folk Museum displays the material culture of these diving communities. Ise-ebi spiny lobster, caught in the strait's strong currents, is served raw as sashimi at harbourside restaurants.