Japan's area is less than that of California, though its economic exclusion zone takes in an enormous 4 million sq. km of ocean. The length of the coastline per sq. km of land is second only to Denmark, yet Japan's annual celebration of its partnership with the sea, Umi no Hi (Marine Day), rated hardly a passing mention on Saturday.

The newest national holiday, Ocean Day was introduced in 1996 to promote awareness of the important role of oceans in our lives, and to encourage us to care for the marine world. It is the same day -- July 20 -- as Marine Commemoration Day, designated in 1941 to mark the return of Emperor Meiji to the port of Yokohama in 1876 from a trip to northern Japan. But Japan's union with the sea extends even to its mythological origin, when the gods Izanagi and Izanami dipped a spear into the water that covered the Earth and the first of its islands formed where the droplets fell.

My own baptism in Japanese waters occurred soon after arriving in Tokyo three years ago, when a colleague invited me to join him for a sail in Tokyo Bay on a 6.4-meter single-masted Yamaha sloop he co-owned. That friend eventually moved on, selling his share in the yacht to another colleague, who in turn soon graduated to a bigger boat -- which he has just sailed across the Atlantic from the United States to Europe. With that, responsibility for the little yacht passed to me and several friends, without whom the costs of such a folly would have marooned a single owner long ago.