I am a man of habbit , i like to awake to the alarm clock , drink coffee , bathroom , drink coffee , breakfast drink coffee , and then , and only then i am ready face the world ! What i dont like is someone banging on my hotel door at 6.30 am , and saying get up , Hinori is in the mountain , the pond is ok to harvest today , and we need to meet him in 20 mins . No coffee , no breakfast , flying visit to the bathroom , diddnt bode well for me today , and anyone i met lol So i throw my gear in a bag and got down to the foyer at 6.45 , at Maruhiros 7am . Quick drive up to the mountains , and we arrived at the mudpond . Hinori was worried about the growth of the koi , as there was so much rain he diddnt feed for three- four weeks , that diddnt give me a lot of confidence , but as ive said before Azuakri ( leaving koi ) is alot of risk , and you take the good with the bad ! The net was dragged around the pond , and the first koi out was a sansai sanke , Hinori made made a fuss , and got out of the water to inspect the koi on the truck . There was a feeling that he was pretty happy , and when i saw the sanke , it had improved no end ! So back he went for the rest . I recognised all the koi coming out , but lost count to how many , i knew one was missing , it was a sanke that i had hoped would break the 80cm barrier . They dragged the net around again , the water left in the net , got smaller and smaller , and i started feeling that there wasnt enough room for a rather large sanke , and Maruhiro was muttering to him self , which means he is worried , annoyed or a combination of both . His hands felt around the small area for what seemed an eternity , then i saw a ripple and colour break the water , you could almost hear everyone breath out in one go , Hinoris smile was back on his face , and the atmosphere became jolly again .
We drove back in convey to the farm , the koi were put into bowls , and measured and pics and videos were done . Most of the koi had improved no end , and i was very happy , the bodies were masive , but some hadnt grown a great deal , some had done really well , but over all i was very happy ! Ill post a few of the videos on here , but as there was 20 out , it will take an age to put them all on here .
After a quick coffee and chatting about the harvest , we moved into the fish house , to buy some nisai and sansai . First bowl we purchasd two orenji ogons , we bought one earlier in the week and it sold very quick , and others wnated them as well , an asagi , and two gin rin showa , one being kindai which really stood out in the pond . Next bowl included two hi utsuri , one of which is gin rin , both are though to be female . A stunning orenji ogon , very high class , a rare gin rin kujaku, and two showa , i liked this patterns , and they are the sort of showa from Maruhiro , that will throw out a lot of sumi !
I needed some Yamabuki ogons , so we popped round to see Marudo , here we found the place flat out , but the breeder came over to us , and made us welocme . So we had a look round at the Kohaku , not finding what we wanted for our budget , we prceeded to bowl up some nisai around 35-40cm , asagi , chagoi and many others including a reverse scaled aka matsuba ! Then we turned our attention to the sansai . I soon had two yamabuki ogons around 55-cm in the bowl , and two chagoi that may be bigger than 55 m .
Being at Marudo , left us right next door to Dainichi and Hoshikin , so we had to visit ! First off we went to Hoshikin , to look for kohaku , and to ee if my kohaku had come out of the mudpond . It had , and had grown well from 32 -52cm , the only down side was a little damage on the cheek that was used during harvest , so i know have to think whether to ship or leave it out there for anther year !
We then visited Dainichi to bowl up and video the 12 nisai that belonged to Gatwick Koi . They were very good , some better than i remember . 10 females , all with certificates , and 2 males , one of which had an amazing body ! Then it was time to return to the hotel , and plan out where we are going tomorrow .