Japan day 5 - Lots more koi farms visited, and a tour through the mountains
My sister in law lives in Tokyo and I arranged to stay with her on Monday night, before flying out the next morning.
The plan was to reach her by 7pm to leave some time for catching up and to sample Tokyo life in her local area. and working back from that - we could achieve a decent stint in the mountains, heading back to Nagaoka station at around 3pm so I could catch the 4.12 pm Shinkansen train.
Breakfast at the New Otani turned out to be a good time for catching up with other koi people from around the world, the so-called, "koi kichi". And on Monday morning, I bumped into yet another person I've been meaning to catch up with for some time - Tony Pitham of Koi Water Barn. He shared some koi tips and experiences from a koi breeding project he ran some years ago in South Africa which has given me a few ideas for my own project next year. Thank you Tony!
We headed over to Shintaro for our
first stop as Seth Alden , who is one of the guys we got to know over the last
few days, offered to show us some koi he has growing on at the farm.
These are some of Shintaro s tosai growing on tanks and later in the day, we popped back and I took some footage of the tosai for my records. I will study the video over the winter to try and gleam ideas on what to select in for winter growing on .
Netting up Seth's fish:
This was also a great opportunity for me to have a fresh look at his fish house now that I have my eye in, and also see some more koi up close in an inspection bowl.
One of Seth's koi was in the tank with the big girls, and it as Shintaro was netting up the fish, it gave me a chance to take some pics of the big girls:
We've seen very few sanke on our trip
so far , except for at a handful of farms. This has been one of the most
suprising aspects of the trip , as with sanke occupying the number 2 spot in
the go sanke varieties behind only kohaku , I'd expect to see them all over
Niigata and in reasonable numbers.
Shintaro is known for his sanke and
he didn't disappoint . I found the sanke big girls amonst the most enjoyable to
view though the whole trip.
With the arrival of some customers,
we made an exit and left them to it.
There is a koi farm we were keen to
get to on a different part of the mountain and that we'd struggled to find so
far. Gary has a directory of all the koi farms in Japan and the sat nav
in the car works by entering the phone number of your destination. That
worked for most koi farms, but not the one we were looking for , which was Koda
koi farm.
At the bottom of each page is a small
section of map which shows the location of the farm. We worked out that there
were around half a dozen farms close enough to Koda that they all had the same
small map section and were located on the adjoining roads. We tried each
of these farms on the sat nav hoping that if the computer found one - it would
get us in the area and we could navigate ourselves to the other 5 farms just
using the maps. And as luck would have it - the sat nav recognised one
and off we went :-)
On the way, we passed Miyatora which
was one of the half a dozen in the area and we pulled up to have a look around.
At most of the koi farms we've been to so far, there are no mud ponds near the main outlet - but there were lots of mud ponds around Miyatora s premises ; whether they belong to Miyatora or another farm... I don't know.
We saw some nice mix of koi in the
tanks, and some interesting metallic utsuri varieties including a metallic
shiro utsuri ! Not seen one of those before! I've really enjoyed
that aspect of the trip - seeing varieties of koi that I've not seen before.
You don't need to buy anything to get pleasure from just looking... and
admiring the work of the koi farmer.
After Miyatora, we were on manual
navigation mode! And the next farm we passed was Chogorou. A man drove
past in a small pickup truck with a range of koi farm paraphernalia on the back
- and he waved with a warm 'hello'. A quick look at the koi farm directory, and
we identified his as the owner, and just left us to have a look around.
The premises were small and he must have other koi houses with his larger
stock - as all we found were small tosai which just have been from this years
spawnings
And there were some ponds adjoining the fish house . You can see the agitation of the water on the second pond, which is made mechanically by a paddle rotating through the water.
His koi house was very neat and tidy
Chogorou is famed for his platinum ogon; just like Izumiya is for Yamabuki or Omosako for shiro. And seeing a tank of platinum babies - we knew we were in the right place.
There was a second tank with quite an eclectic mix of varieties . And it will be interesting to see how these develop into full blown tosai and nissai next year.
Next up was Jinbai.
He is famed for having one of the
oldest lines of sanke, and we'd clearly got to him at the wrong time because
the tanks were only sparesly populated and the water level was very low.
We did see some interesting examples of sanke though ..
Next up was Yamasan.
They kindly put koi socks over the
water outlets to allow the pond surface to settle on each pond we moved to so
we could see the fish better . The water was a little murky and difficult
to get pictures there - but I can report they had some examples of long fin
koi. Not my cup of tea at all, and I find them odd looking. But if you are into long finned koi, then you'd have enjoyed seeing the examples at this farm.
Other than that, a wide range of varieties of normal koi. We didn't spend long there - just a quick look around, to leave some dealers in peace as they negotiated over stock purchases.
Other than that, a wide range of varieties of normal koi. We didn't spend long there - just a quick look around, to leave some dealers in peace as they negotiated over stock purchases.
After Koda, we toured through the
mountains taking the scenic route back to Mushigame. We stopped at the
odd koi farm that we passed on route, like this one .
I had a good look at these spawning
ropes, and the way they've been mounted, to give me some ideas for next year.
And, some pics of the scenery at a
few places where we paused to take in the views.
On arriving back in Mushigame, we
spotted a koi house that we hadn't been to before and navigated a perilously
narrow stretch of road with sheer drops to take a look at this place
And finally , a koi farm that had a
tank with lots of goshiki... We'd seen some examples at farms thus far,
but not so many in a pond. It was clearly a point of focus for this breeder.
We popped into Shintaro s premises to
say goodbye, before heading back to Nagaoka for my train
A view from the train leaving
Nagaoka. I am already thinking of a return trip.
And then began the journey home....
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