Choosing a ayu rod
Weight is the whole argument. You hold this rod out over the water for hours without a reel seat to rest on, so grams matter more than any other number. Across this catalogue ayu rods run from 95 g to 575 g, but the ones people actually fish cluster near 240 g, and that figure is quoted at nine metres. A competitor will pay a large sum to lose twenty grams.
Length is reach, and nine metres is the standard. The 9.0 m and 8.5 m sizes together account for more than half the rods here. Longer models to 12 m exist for wide water, and Gamakatsu's Long Range sits at the far end. Shorter blanks are for tight streams. Zoom models publish several lock lengths on one blank, so a single rod covers a span of the ladder.
Hardness, not power. The blank is graded on the H scale, H2.25 to H4.0 here, with H2.6 and H2.75 the common competition grades. Pick it for the water: stiffer for heavy flow and firm decoy control, softer where the current is gentle and the tippet is doing the work.
Do not read the section count as a construction difference. Shimano, Gamakatsu and Nissin mark their rods telescopic; Suntech instead publishes seven to fourteen sections with a collapsed length. That is a recording convention, not two different builds, and a section count never distinguishes the two.
Everything else follows the decoy. There is no reel, no lure rating and no casting weight, and the tippet is measured in tenths of a 号. The rod's job is to place a live fish precisely and then absorb a strike on line that would snap under a kilogram.