Today is April 4, 2023. The air temperature is 21 degrees, and the sea temperature is around 14 to 15 degrees. At the pearl farm, the raft is being maintained and repaired for the new year. The main work at the pearl farm begins in April with the insertion of nuclei into the Akoya oysters, and the year-end work ends with the year-end and New Year harvest and sorting of the pearls. During the months of February and March, employees working at pearl farms take a lot of vacation time. Even though two days off a week has become the norm these days, pearl farms only have one day off a week. This is the only way to farm Akoya shellfish, which are living creatures. In February and March, maintenance, extension, and dismantling of the raft are carried out by a small number of employees who come to work. At the same time, it is necessary to take care of Akoya oysters, which will be nucleated from April onwards. Shellfish hibernating in the winter have a lot of deposits from oysters and sea squirts, so they are soaked in salt water to remove these deposits. These Akoya oysters are then sorted according to their maturity and prepared for nucleation starting in April.
This year’s nuclear insertion is likely to start on April 6th. Since the beginning of the year, the price of the pearl auction has risen to an unprecedented level, so it can be said that the enthusiasm of the employees at the pearl farm is strong. It was the highest price in at least 50 years. The soaring pearls will be on the market around summer or later. From now on, those pearls go through various processing. These include stain removal, bleaching, drilling, and threading. Most pearl companies are now selling last year’s harvested pearls at high prices to match the current market. I can’t help it either. However, if there is a company that sells last year’s pearls at last year’s price, I would highly appreciate and respect that company. In fact, I don’t know what I would do if I were to manage a pearl company, but I would like to be conscious of honest business rather than short-term profits. Money is inorganic and increases and decreases, but the feelings received from people, good or bad, never disappear. I think that there may be value in life in such events. People say, “The poor are sore losers!”, but I can’t argue against that. In any case, it is a difficult question what the appropriate price should be in a volatile market. Is it difficult or should I say that the problem is that an office worker like me does not have the authority to decide the price? If the price of an existing product suddenly rises one day because the market price has risen, the customer will still be confused. But so are electricity, gas, and gasoline. Yet I still don’t have a clear idea about them. Today, I was thinking of redoing the photography of the items I sell on Etsy. I’m a company employee during the day, so when I get home, that’s it.
However, a client of the company I work for asked me to create a POP, so after I got home, I spent a lot of time working on it. I provide the customer with pearls, and he uses the pearls to run the 1,000 yen pearl gacha. 1,000 yen is about $7. If you put $ 7 into the gacha, you can get an Akoya pearl accessory. Since the pearl farm of the company where I work is his hometown, he started this business with the desire to spread the pearls all over the country. I feel the significance of allowing many people to enjoy pearls, which have an expensive image, at a low price, so I am cooperating with him. When we started this business, people at the company I work for objected. “Don’t sell pearls cheap.” However, when the Gacha pearls began to sell, they began to say, “It’s a success.” And when the price of pearls soared, they were reluctant to let me sell pearls to gacha customers. I think their point is very easy to understand. When people have no beliefs, ideals, or goals, their thoughts change depending on the situation at that time. From these things, I want to live according to the voice of my heart. I will not be a person who does not act and shouts about other people’s movements from places where they are not responsible. It looks like it’s going to be complaining, so I’m going to stop.
It seems that the person who operates the gacha went to Hida Takayama and Shirakawa-go last weekend, and there were really many foreign tourists. Please come visit Japan. I will guide you if you don’t mind. In recent years, it seems that many tourists from overseas are visiting tourist spots that even Japanese people rarely go. Tokyo and Osaka are good places, but one of the prides of Japan may be its natural environment. The area where my parents’ house is located has only small mountains and rice fields. However, the flow of time is very gentle. The night is so quiet that you can almost hear the sound of blood running through your body. The trees on the mountains seem to gently absorb all the sounds. I think there are similar places around the world for this. However, I would like many travelers to enjoy spending a lot of money in Japan. I lost sight of the purpose of this article, but the point is that this year’s nucleus insertion into Akoya oysters will begin the day after tomorrow. And next year, 70% of surviving Akoya oysters will show us wonderful pearls. We would be happy if you could imagine Akoya oysters quietly piling up mother-of-pearl(nacre) in the sea even for three seconds every three years.
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