Off to Marudo we go! Marudo has brought over a selection of Female Jumbo Tosai for us to consider. Mostly Kohaku and a couple of Sanke. He explained he didn’t have such a good year for Sanke so unfortunately doesn’t have many good ones to pick from. Peering into the transport tank, the water was pretty filthy. These had been heavily on the feed so it was hard to make out the beni quality and skin. On selecting out a handful, the colour and skin was certainly nothing to worry about! As you’ll soon see. Beautiful beni on all of the fish, we managed one Sanke which is very striking. I expect some of the kata sumi on the beni to shrink as she gets older. Certainly one to watch.
Making the final selections we were down to 12 koi. Great shapes, a mixture of patterns, and super skin quality. These are all guaranteed female and are eligible for growing on at Queni Koi HQ. Really excited to get these back to the shop. Will be on the website once back in the U.K.
After Marudo we visited Isa again. Yesterday I didn’t have time to sex each one so today I wanted to bowl all of them and take some time with Isa-san sexing the Koi. Isa Koi are very deceiving. Male or female their bodies are big. The only way to tell the sex of these is to check the oiboshi in the pectoral fin and check for milt. There are never any guarantees at Isa when picking Tosai as he himself admits it’s hard to tell sometimes. The Koi were at 18c which helps when sexing the fish. I checked each one carefully. Then Isa would check. We agreed on all of them, which was reassuring! Please be patient while I get the Isa fish on the website, it's not a 5 minute task! With limited internet now, it may have to wait till I am back in the U.K.
Thanking Isa and his staff we jumped in the car and nipped around a few shops to pick up Japanese nets and the like for the shop. We then went to Mr Secret Sanke.
We viewed his Jumbo Tosai for sale, one in particular caught my eye. A beautiful Koi with serious skin quality, stunning white shiroji with glossy beni and sumi. I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much about this one as I knew it wasn’t going to be within budget. A quick video on the phone will do for now. In terms of buying them, the Koi were feeding so we unfortunately we couldn't net the whole pond. As we fly home tomorrow. He will stop feeding the Koi for a few days, then send a few videos of some selections for us to consider. He knows what we like!
Moving on from Mr Sanke we drove to Kaneko then Yamazaki for a catch up. Nothing of interest unfortunately, but we’ll be back in autumn to raid Yamazaki’s nisai and sansai. He always puts a smile on our face! The happiest guy in these mountains.
Driving back towards the hotel, we had one last visit to Odakan just to say our thanks and to view his event fish coming up for sale next week. Very impressive fish as part of the event. Koi from Sakai Fish Farm, Momotaro, Beppu, Isa, Matsue, Ueno, Minuma, Dainichi, Maruyama and Omosako.
Should you want to put your name down for any of these Koi in the event. Please email myself (Mike), or contact me on Facebook. The price you see on the website is the cost of the Koi, on top of this you’ll need to pay 20% commission, shipping and VAT. Mail me for an accurate price for any koi you wish to go for. I've included some recommendations of which I saw today at Odakan. Follow the link below to the full listing.
Ending our trip on a high, I managed to grab some footage of the impressive pond I mention in a previous blog post. I hope the quality comes out okay. All in excess of 75cm and over a metre long!
Thank you to everyone for reading the blog, for more stories and tales of Japan. You know where to find us in the shop!
P.S. We'd like to say a big thank you to Isa and Marudo for inviting us into the Shinkokai Association ! Very honoured to be part of the Shinkokai, I hope I can get our plaque home in once piece!
See you all soon.
