As you can probably tell, not much has happened yet! ;-) Arrived in Japan on the afternoon of the 29th, and headed from Osaka straight down to Mihara to pick up my car, then headed over to catch up with Takigawa-san. Went out for dinner with him, and talked at length about how everything is going.
On the following morning (Saturday), I headed back up there as he wanted to show me some new parent Koi that he had bought from Matsue. Because of taking these new Koi in, he had cleared all the top Nisai out of this secret house, and put them all in the mud pond last November, where they will reside right through until October. As you can imagine, it's pretty cold, with a water temperature of 3c. This practice is not uncommon though, and every year he always put his best larger Koi out over Winter.