Kelts - sometimes they are so silver it's too good to be true - are so pathetically thin it looks as if their heads are out of proportion to their bodies.
A well-mended kelt can put up a terrific fight, and occasionally a fresh-run springer has come into the river so quickly that it's easily tired out in the strong current.
Japan Foundation, Manila hosted a forum last week to introduce to Manila the journal, which was represented by contributing editor Roland Kelts and artist Satoshi Kitamura.
"Japan's stagnation, pilloried by economists and analysts in the west, may turn out to be the catalyst for its greatest strengths: resilience, reinvention and quiet endurance," writes Roland Kelts for the New Statesman.