Word: ayukawa
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...Oshika whaleland museum in this tiny village in northeastern Japan, you can get your cetacean two ways: stuffed, in the form of a plush children's toy, or canned, for dinner. But you can't get it fresh. Although Ayukawa was once a bustling whaling port, a two-decade-long international ban on commercial whaling has all but killed the industry here. Now just a pair of companies occasionally ply nearby waters, roving for the Baird's beaked whales they're still allowed to harvest. It's the sort of insignificant game the whalers of Ayukawa would have thrown back...
...Indeed, some coastal towns have been whaling for centuries. Yet few Japanese ate whale prior to the lean postwar years, before General Douglas MacArthur encouraged it as a cheap, abundant source of protein. Japan took to it with gusto, and that meant boom times for fishing ports like Ayukawa, where boats brought back as many as 600 whales a year. "In so many ways?food, culture, tourism?everything was based on whaling," says 67-year-old Yusa, whose family has been in whaling for two generations. That prosperity died when commercial whaling was banned by the IWC in 1986. Japan...
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