Ohayo Gozai Masu

When we booked this trip in January we decided today was to be a non farm day to allow us to have a Saturday evening out, a little lay in and to catch up with all our paperwork. All was going well until around 11 pm a bolt of lightning struck the Pub like a bomb! The lights went out for a few minutes, then just as we all sat down someone mentioned a harvest early Sunday morning! You guessed it, we were up at 6-30am and off we went chasing Tancho showa! Not all harvest information works out and in this case the koi breeder had an issue with a pond pump late last night so had cancelled the mud pond harvest.

We decided to carry on and visited Ikarashi, Kaneko, Hirashin and Aoki koi farms. We were successful selecting some Shiro Utsuri and Kikusui at Kaneko. These mainly big bodied female koi have great Hada (skin quality) and underlying sumi (black) that should finish well in the UK.

Next stop, AOKI Koi farm. His Goshiki and Hikari mono are very famous. Although we decided not to select nisai, we did persuade Aoki san to let us select some beautiful tosai. The Harewake Matsuba, Beni kikokuryu, Goshiki and Kwarimono selected were really interesting and of great quality - some ideal “grow on project” koi.

We popped into a koi show, then to Hirashin to complete our photos, prior to stopping for a late sushi lunch then back to our hotel around 4pm for a deserved day off !!!