the ugly earring

(photos from here) 

ama: sea person. pearl diver. ama geisha

A large percentage of the women in Shirahama (100 miles of Tokyo) have dived at some point in their lives as a means of getting food and money for their family. But a few women persisted with it, making it their own skilled profession every year during the May to September diving season. The ama consider diving to be a rather undesirable job. I have yet to meet one who wished her daughter to become a diver. Yet every ama I have met has spoken with pride of her diving skills and of her own desire to be a diver. To call oneself an ama is almost to claim an honor for oneself, and many divers have told me, “I’m not a real ama,” because they didn’t feel that they were skilled enough to claim the title “ama.”

Ama say that a love of the sea is necessary for all divers, otherwise the difficult, frequently frightening work is too unpleasant to endure.

“amagoya”

Despite these harsh conditions, they love diving, so I have asked them from where their love springs. A partial answer seems to lie in the freedom that comes with diving. Virtually all ama also hold another job, usually caring for a small farm, in addition to running their homes. And for most of these women, being at home when young meant that their mothers-in-law and other members of their husbands’ families would be watching over them (this is less true of the current generation). But ama always have a space of their own: the amagoya.

The ama meet at the amagoya each morning during the diving season. The hut is soon surrounded by a flurry of activity, with the ama mending gear, soliciting the latest gossip and laughing at bawdy jokes. Next, they begin eating, loading up on calories to support them for the day’s work. Because of the harsh ocean conditions, divers can stay in the water for only a few hours at a time before becoming too cold, too sick or too tired to continue. Then, they make their way back to the rocky beach (almost always as a group), sell their catch, eat lunch, rest and talk with their friends as they spend the rest of the day gradually warming themselves up from their minor hypothermia.

 (the above excerpts taken from this wonderful essay).