Eging

　　You might think the topic "Eging" would be a typing error of "Aging", but this word is correct and even Japanese! I'll try to explain the origin or how it was made. You would be amazed at the extreme flexibility of Japanese. "Eging" can be disassembled into three parts; "e", "gi" and "ing". "E" means the bait and "gi" means wood. Then what do you think is "egi"? As you can guess, "egi" means wooden bait, i.e. lures for fishing. The English suffix "ing" implying actual action was added to a Japanese word "egi" and consequently "eging" was produced as the word describing fishing with wooden lures. It's very funny but really functional. The Japanese language is provided with phonograms called "katakana", which are used to express the sound of foreign words. "Eging" is the romanized spelling of the original expression by "katakana". "Eging" has become popular in recent years. This fishing technique is used for squid fishing.
　　Some enthusiasts always carry a rod and other tackle for "eging" in their vehicles and often try fishing wherever they suspect the habitation of squids. They don't need raw bait and so the tackle doesn't emit bad smells in the car. One of the participants was an enthusiast and tried fishing from the coast in front of the eating house where we took a rest. AND, he caught one as shown in the picture.

(Vocabulary)
phonograms  表音文字
romanized spelling  ローマ字つづり
suffix  接尾辞
tackle [U] 道具, 用具, (特に) 釣り道具
habitation [U] 居住; [C] 住居, 居住地
unfit for human habitation 人間の居住にふさわしくない