Takashi Odajima picked up a cracked and faded photograph and dusted it off with his sleeve. He smiled a little sadly at the image from long ago, back when he was a baby boy.
In the photo, he sits on his uncle's lap as his family poses at a nearby dock, squid heaped in the background. In another, his uncle dries rows of squid, carefully folded like shirts over a clothesline on the roof of their house.
Odajima's family has lived for generations in Hakodate, Hokkaido. It's a city that runs on squid — a place where restaurants outside the local fish market advertise the start of the squid-fishing season with colorful banners.