One of the things I miss from growing up in Colorado is fishing just down the road from my house. We had a couple fishing spots we used to frequent (Two Mile bridge? One Mile bridge? I don’t remember what they were called.) At that time carp was bait. You’d catch it, hack it up and use it to catch something else. Or you’d use salmon eggs. (Now, here in Japan, carp and salmon eggs are dinner.)

We also used to attempt fishing at Vaughn Lake, but always came away with naught but new swear words from my dad and a reasonably pleasant camping experience. (That’s no joke, by the way. We never caught a fish in Vaughn Lake.)

I did, however, discover that I was allergic to pretty much everything in the air. This reached its extreme after I helped my dad photograph a rodeo. I was down in the unkempt area between the arena and the outer safety fence and inhaling all kinds of animal related microorganisms and various kinds of pollen. The result was a runny nose and swollen eyes. More specifically, my reaction was bad enough it triggered scleritis (scleral edema) and my eyeballs swelled.

A trip to the doctor was followed by a motorcycle trip to Denver to see an allergist. I was allergic to all 32 things he injected into my back and was put on a lengthy treatment that involved drinking a cocktail of allergens in a cold drink each morning and evening. When we moved back to Kansas, I discovered a couple other things I was allergic to and those were added to the cocktail.

In the end, my allergies are 95% cured. I still get a mild reaction if I’m locked in a room with cats, but most trees don’t bother me. Except here in Japan.

Although I’ve always wanted to take the girls fishing and camping, there are some complicating factors.

1) Fishing laws are confusing here.
2) She Who Must Be Obeyed isn’t interested.
3) Our youngest suffers from mild asthma, mostly during weather changes, and also seems to have inherited some of my allergies.

Making things worse, back in the 50s and 60s Japan hacked down 43% of its domestic trees and replaced them with fast growing industrial cedar. The mono-crop not only destroyed ground cover and chased off wildlife, it also created a cottage industry in masks and other allergy goods when it was discovered that many Japanese are allergic to cedar pollen. The pollen gets bad enough that it looks like smoke pouring off the trees and the national news gives pollen reports the same way they report the weather. (Their scale runs from “It’s Okay” to “It’s hell out there” to “Stay the hell inside and don’t breathe.”) Every other year, despite those years of treatment, even I have some problems because of it.

We therefore haven’t been camping with the girls and they’ve never had the joy of catching a gorgeous fish and then killing it and eating it. My goal is to take the girls to Vaughn lake one day and finally pull a damned fish out of that lake.