Izu Family Vacation

IZU VACATION

R.I.P. little crab. I’m really sorry about that, but for what it’s worth I don’t think I’ll ever forget you.

It all started, or ended rather, when driving home from a weekend family trip down the peninsula a ways. We’d arrived back near the center of the peninsula after being on the southern coast the day before and western coast later that day and the next morning. There was nary a beach nor seaside for miles around at the closer to center of the peninsula place we’d arrived at, but all of a sudden the little girl child started screaming "kani! Kani! KA-NIIIII!" (crab, Crab! CRAAAAB!!!)

Before I could finish telling her that there aren’t any crabs around there one of her quick-witted big brothers in the back was correcting me. “Hai sawagani iru yo!”— “Yeah there are river crabs around here!”. So the next thing you know two brothers, a mom riding shotgun and dad-driver me were looking out of the car every which way, searching like mad and questioning the little girl “Where, Where, Where?”. ”Is it down on the road?” We said. “Is on up on that house?" We asked. All of us shouting questions while rightfully impressed with her ability to spot a river crab from the back seat of the car while stopped at a red light.

Impressed right up till a boy started shouting then handed something to the mom, who promptly screamed and let go of the something. The something was, of course, a crab. It was a yado-kani to be exact, a hermit crab. The poor little guy was trying like hell to get out of his shell. He hadn’t seen water for a good 24 hours. He appeared very, very thirsty.

The previous afternoon we'd all walked out to an island. Yes walked. It’s possible for this particular island due to a land bridge that appears during low tide. On the way out and back we had a blast seeing all the crabs and fish, a few starfish and other sea creatures along with about a gazillion little hermit crabs trapped in pockets of water between the rocks. I’d actually noticed the little girl filling her pockets with shells and made a mental note to check to be sure none were moving at the time, but needless to say that mental note got lost only to be found again soon after she pulled the frantic little hermit crab from her vest pocket.

Its chances of making it back to the sea alive are scant at best, thus my beginning this tale with R.I.P. little crab, but we did make some effort to raise its chances of living to something more than zero. Some effort did not include driving all the way back to the coast. Three kids in the backseat for the weekend was about to end and a hermit crab’s life or death situation wasn’t going to change that for dog tired dad driver me, but as luck would have it traffic was moving slow on the bridge over Kano river in Ohito so I handed the little guy to Shizuka and she chucked him down into the river. Who knows? Maybe he caught a good current and made it however many miles to the sea before the fresh water killed him? That’s the story we told ourselves anyway.

Either way, that’s how our weekend mini-vacation on the Izu Peninsula ended. Ask me about it 20 years from now and I doubt I’ll be able to tell you much of where we went or what we did, but even if I live to be 100 I’ll never, ever forget that poor little hermit crab who hitched a ride home with us in the littler girl’s vest pocket!