On the morning of the 5th, we went to Dainichi Koi Farm, where we spent the entire day with Shigeru-san and Futoshi-san, who looked after us extremely well indeed! A fantastic day!!!
We were also taken up into the mountains, to see one of the other Koi houses, as well as the site where Mano-san's house used to be.
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Today proved to be an equally enjoyable day to yesterday! We went to Yamamatsu Koi Farm, and got loads of material for Michael Cox (Koi Nations Mag). Then, we went out for lunch with Sakai-san. This proved to be particularly interesting!! Michael asked me a whole load of really in depth questions that I then had to translate and ask Sakai-san. Needless to say,
I jokingly threatened Michael with 'pay-back' for putting me on the spot so much. However, after spending much time in the restaurant discussing/translating many things, I left feeling incredibly pleased with myself, having not failed once during what was the most difficult translation ever!
I think Michael and crew were also suitably impressed. A fantastic time, and incredibly interesting!!!
Pictured, is Yamamatsu's 'Kashira' Nisai Sanke of 55cm that we sold last November. This is the nicest Sanke I have seen in a long long time!
Later in the afternoon, we went off to see Murata, a breeder I had been intending to visit for quite some time! Time wasn't really on our side though, as we had to be back at the hotel for 6pm.
A few of these are pretty good. Murata-san surprised me, as he had at least two other secret facilities where he is hiding Koi away. Two of these (one at another location, and one at yet another) Sansai were extremely good. One had a flowery pattern, and the other was a Sandan. He said it was a toss up between the two as his Kashira. However, although he was happy to sell me these Koi, he requested me not to photograph them, as he doesn't want to arouse interest in them from third parties. Shame, as I would have liked to have shared the pics with viewers of this blog.
