Day 1 - Japan Trip November 2025
I’ve made it to Japan ! Writing the blog from my hotel room at the end of a long journey , appended with a few hours of successful koi hunting.
Everywhere I look, the landscape feels like it’s been shaped by hands that understood patience. The picture above is taken from a resting spot high up in the mountains. Terraces climb up the hillsides, holding koi ponds and that have fed rice for generations. You can almost see the years layered into the land — each contour, each pond, each narrow path worn smooth from people who’ve lived snd worked it for decades and probably centuries. It’s not the kind of beauty that’s loud or dramatic, but one that’s been built slowly, in rhythm with the seasons. Stood there at this viewing point, and as a koi breeder myself , all those aspects resonate and I had a feeling of all the human work that those mountains have seen , experienced , and support
The connection between this land and the koi is hard to ignore. The same care that goes into shaping a field seems to flow into shaping the fish.
Taking in the environment here in Niigata , it extends my feeling of koi farming as art, and you can feel that in the way everything fits together in the natural world , and in the koi produced here in Niigata and also the koi we produce back in the UK.
it’s easy to see how the landscape itself has influenced how people see and appreciate koi. There’s this shared sense of calm.
I guess that’s part of why I came — to return to this area , take in that feeling, and maybe to bring a bit of that feeling home and into our own koi farm. There’s something about being here that makes ideas start bubbling up, even through the jet lag. I’m hoping some of this inspiration finds its way back to Byer Koi Farm.
