Day Six

Today was to start with another highlight of any trip to Japan, a visit to Dainichi, breeders of last year’s All Japan GC and this years Mature Champion.

Toru phoned them as we made our way from the hotel and they asked him to come after 9.00am, so we popped in to see Marudo on the way. A selection of koi were bowled here and purchased by the dealers. The breeder was in good form and was happy to bowl as many koi as we wanted to look at, and we got out of there about 10.00am.

It was then off to the Tosai house at Dainichi. After a good look around at some of the finest young koi in all of Japan, the breeder informed us of which four ponds of the fourteen were available for selecting from. The other 10 were all considered Tategoi at this stage he informed us and having looked at them I could understand why. Some of these Tosai were well over 35cm, so they will be huge in the Spring and the colour and patterns were wonderful.

Having viewed the four available ponds we elected to select from the cheapest and most expensive. The two dealers busied themselves at the cheaper pond and pulled out an extremely good selection of Go Sanke and Tanchos. The breeder came to look at their selection and let Toru know that as it stood the cost of these koi would be far in excess of what we had expected. To bring the price down, he removed 4 extremely high quality from the bowl, and priced these at 3 ½ times the price of the others, thereby bringing down the cost of the rest to the expected price. However the 4 koi that had been priced more highly were looking good value still and Christie took these as well as a selection from the others. I would have certainly been interested if he had turned them down, but now it was my turn to select from the more expensive pond.

It did not take long to see some superb fish, but I had to be very selective at the price and only a few were making the cut. At the end there were fewer in the bowl than I had anticipated and Christie was also disappointed as he had been hoping to select a boxful when I had finished. In the end I picked out the six best to my eye, and hoped that the price would not be too prohibitive. Toru started his negotiations with the breeder and it was obvious from Toru’s face that the price was far higher than even he expected. However instead of coming to me with the price, he continued talking to the breeder for at least 10 minutes more, before taking me aside and explaining that the breeder had wanted more than I could afford, but as Toru knew what I wanted to pay, he had worked hard at getting the price down as much as possible. In the end the price was acceptable to me and we agreed the purchase. Afterwards, Toru explained that two of the koi I had selected had been offered to dealers and almost twice what I paid, which explains why the breeder did not want to lower his prices and I am extremely grateful to Toru for his negotiating skills. I presented a gift to the breeder before leaving and we made our way off to lunch, at an excellent coffee shop where a curry went down very well.

After lunch Toru got on the phone again to make arrangements to visit other breeders, but the flu bug has hit hard out here, and Isa was in hospital with it and Jirosuke was laid up in bed. That reduced our options and we headed off to Aoki, who normally has a good selection of metallics in stock. The first two ponds were full of Tosai, including some extremely good Goshiki, next came the parents which includes a stunning Goshiki we had enquired about buying last year. Then there were the koi for sale with a variety of metallic varieties and some good Doitsu Goshiki, which would fill some of Christies orders. Whilst the koi were being selected, we could see a blizzard raging outside and conditions did not look good to be driving around the mountains. After a coffee that you could stand your spoon up in, we headed off to what would be our last stop of the day. Kaneko.

The drive up took us through some serious snowfall and Toru was also struggling to stay awake after his heavy lunch. We tried to keep him awake by asking inane questions just to get his mind working, and somehow we managed to get there.

After a good look at the ponds of koi available, Christie started to select some nice Shiro Utsuri from one of the pond. When they were bowled the quality of the Shiro was beautiful and the koi looked extremely nice. Christie was even more pleased when he got a price that was far lower than we expected and another deal was done. A high grade Shiro was then bowled and photographed so that Christie could e-mail the photo back to South Africa where a potential customer had placed an order and could make the decision of whether this was the koi for him.

It was dark again by the time we had finished and we headed back to town and dinner at a steakhouse. The food was both good and filling and I was ready to put my feet up by the time we got back to the hotel.