Japan 2011 day 5

[ian m]

Well today started with a 2.5 hour trip down South along the coast from Nagaoka to the breeder Nagoshi, formally known as Exclusive.

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For those in the club that remember, these were the Exclusive Kohaku we had as grow and shows, I think two years ago. Ken’s winning koi is shown below

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This was a visit to mainly to look at tosai, but with the option of some nisai and sansai. The morning began with a pond being netted for us to sort through, this pond contained approx. 2000-2500 tosai and all had to be looked at. Four of us were involved in this process, two of us taking turns between socking the koi from the pond to an inspection bowl and the other putting the rejects back into the pond. Rich was inspecting and rejecting fish and the fourth was making a count of the numbers.
We soon got into a rhythm, however it still took us a couple of hours to complete the process, by the end I was completely soaked, I’m not sure if this was from the soaking I continually took from the koi or the 35 degree heat we were working in in the fish house. . It’s amazing though how quickly you start to learn what is going to be rejected and it’s good when he picks the ones you think are good.

A few beers over lunch helped to replace the fluids lost during the morning. Afternoon was for selection of older koi and a number were bowled and looked at. A fellow hobbyist on the trip has been looking for a tancho sanke all week and he finally decided to take a lovely 58 cm that was in the bowl along with a sanke. The next thing we saw and heard was the sanke trying to leave the bowl in a hurry, it flipped over and landing on the tail of the other fish, unfortunately for Mike the tancho was damaged and he will continue looking for his tancho sanke.

That’s all for today folks.

Ian San

[site admin]

Hi Ian,
great fun sorting through all those tosai, after a while you can see the difference between the keepers and ones going back.
Did you go in the Tosai house at the far end you go up some wooden steps to look into it, that is where the real special ones are kept
He did not want Rich to pick from there, in fact he did everything to prevent it, like not netting the koi you pointed too

Dave.

[ian m]

Yes we did have alook in there Dave, he was netting a few asagi for Rich to look at but they had very little red on them so went back. Some crackers in there though#

Ian