Crab

The Sea of Japan here is cold and shallow over a wide shelf, and the seabed off Tottori and Shimane is prime ground for zuwai-gani, snow crab. The season opens in early November and runs to around March, and it reorganises the entire local economy for those months.

The names, which are a competition

It is the same species everywhere, and every region insists on its own name. Here it is matsuba-gani — "pine needle crab," for the shape of the legs. In Fukui it is echizen-gani. In Kyoto Prefecture it is taiza-gani. In Kanazawa it is simply zuwai.

These are not marketing inventions so much as a genuine, long-running regional argument about whose is best, conducted at auction prices. Individual outstanding crabs are branded and tagged and sold for extraordinary sums at the season's first auction.

The smaller female — here called oyagani — has a much shorter season and is bought for the roe, not the meat. Locals often prefer it, and it costs a fraction of the male.

Beni-zuwai, the honest option

There is a second crab: beni-zuwai, red snow crab, caught deeper and available for much more of the year. It is sweeter, more watery, and much cheaper.

Purists dismiss it. It is also what a great many local people actually eat, and on a cruise budget it is the sensible choice — a whole beni-zuwai costs less than a few legs of matsuba.

And the rest of the year

Outside crab season this port lands enormous volumes of maaji (horse mackerel), saba, sardine and squid, and in summer the local speciality is iwagaki — rock oysters, which are a summer shellfish here rather than a winter one, and are large enough that one is a serving.

The direct-sales market beside the port sells all of it and will pack for travel. It is a working market with cruise passengers in it, not a market for cruise passengers.