Folks,
Just a few short words and photo's from the land of koi.
I put the wheels in motion nearly two years ago to visit Japan with Rich from Richdon Koi. After the earthquake and the devastation that was caused I thought long and hard about visiting, before finally deciding I was going. It was a fairly long trip, starting with a flight from Manchester to Frankfurt, then Seoul, South Korea for a short stop over before finally arriving at Tokyo Narita airport. The flights were followed by a slow ride to Tokyo’s central station, (the Narita express being closed due to the earthquake), then by a nearly two hour ride on the world famous bullet train. We then checked into the New Otani hotel in Nagaoka where food, red wine and bed followed.
The first day started with what was supposed to be a quick visit to Hoshikin to arrange a time to visit later in the week, however we were soon selecting from a pond that had been netted for us, orange and white kohaku’s everywhere, 16 fish were selected there, all pure quality.
A photo below for someone (Mitch) who likes tancho’s, this one was nearly 90cm
Next stop was Shinoda up in the hills, famous for hi utsuri’s and doitsu amongst other varieties. I’ve never been a fan of either but when you look into a pond of nearly 1mtr long parent fish you can’t help but be impressed. Also added a picture for Martin, apond full of hi utsuri’s, urhhh!!!
Masaki was the next stop, some superb shiro utsuri and asagi along with other’s varieties here in a small fish house, mainly nisai and above, all basking in 5 degree water!!!!!!! but looking mind blowingly good. However he had thousands of small tosai in all varieties bubbling away at 20 plus degrees. Interestingly whilst standing in the fish house a local was taking his pet for a walk up the hill!!!!!
Initial visits were then made to a few breeders we will visit later in the week. Some amazing fish there, 50cm tosai at 10 month’s old!!!!
Final visit of the day was to Marudo, although he was not there we were shown around a number of fish houses holding a wide variety of koi. The most awe inspiring photo I have is of the guys I am with standing by a pond of 90-100cm koi!!!!!!!!!!
Hope you find this interesting?
Ian San