After being on my poor jet-lagged feet for the entire day (there are no chairs at the show), it was good to return to the hotel for a relaxing bath. Then it was off to the Shinkokai banquet, complements of Mr. Sakai again. This was nice because tickets cost $100 each. Beautiful Japanese women served drinks from strategically placed carts while everyone chatted with friends. As in the states, the banquet hall was ringed with large tables; however, there were again no chairs, which I found to be most odd. My legs and feet found it exceptionally odd as well. Finally, the hostesses removed the plastic wrap from the food-laden tables in the room's center. Suddenly, the world's most polite people converged en masse leaving gaijin like myself in the dust. However, I'm not the petite person you know me to be because I passed up tables covered with gourmet treats. It was impossible, on the other hand, to glom onto a table, so many of us had to eat with everything balanced on our arm and wrist. Dinner was followed by the usual speeches, all of them in Japanese of course. The one exception was Joel Burkhard, who got to introduce and interview all of the foreign judges, one of whom was Joe Zuritsky. If you've never met Joel, he's a very funny guy who happens to be fluent in Japanese and who loves to put people, like the visiting foreigners, in "humorous" situations. Luckily, most of the guests had already filled up on the plentiful libations. On Sunday morning we all checked out of the hotel, gathered our belongings, and headed for the train station again. Luckily the trains to the show site were lightly occupied because it was a Sunday. We left our luggage in the ZNA conference room and had one more look around the show. It was a good time to kibitz with fellow Americans and visitors from other nations, and to see how many breeders one could recognize. All three Mano brothers (Dainichi), Shintaro, and Sakai (Matsunosuke) were highly visible. Kaz Takeda was present with one of his proverbial groups as was Peter Waddington from England. Jack Chan had a booth where he was selling show sweatshirts, and a number of members from the MAKC were also present. American dealers included Ray Abell, Ben Plonski, Joel Burkhard and Kevin Phan. American show judges who were present included Ron Goforth, U.S. District ZNA Chairman, and Galen Hansen. At 11:00 we again gathered all of our things and headed for the train. Although our eventual destination was Isawa, home of Sakai, we headed for Chiba, the prefecture east of Tokyo in order to visit Tani Fish Farm and Miyoshiike, both of whom are dealers located near the airport. After many transfers to other lines, we finally got off the train and waited outside a Japanese bakery for Kenji, one of the owners of Tani, to pick us up in a small bus. After a fifteen-minute drive we arrived at a multi-use facility. The Tani Fish Farm also has a miniature golf course (real grass), koi facilities, a koi-fishing hole where you really DO fish for koi, and a restaurant. As I understood it, the restaurant will even cook up the koi that you catch, and indeed, there were a dozen people huddled around the ponds with fishing poles in hand. The koi at this facility were mostly pond grade fish that ranged from a few dollars up to a few thousand; however, the bulk of the fish were inexpensive. The one great find of the day was located on a sale table, which held copies of the official All Japan Show photo books from 1989 to 1998. When you buy or order these books at the show itself, they cost $150. I got all ten for just $5 each! Because they were heavy, I left them behind to be shipped which cost $70 ($20 more than the books) and was worth every penny. Finally, we headed back to the train and reversed our tracks and headed back through Tokyo and on to Isawa, a journey that took almost four hours. Because of the time factor, the group skipped Miyoshiike's facility. After pulling into Isawa station, we cabbed it to a new business hotel that was located near a Pachinko parlor. The view outside my window consisted of a parking lot and a series of incredibly high girders that held up what looked like the world's largest fishing net. It turned out to be a two tiered driving range, a common site all over Japan. The local discount store had a golf section. And the only clubs they sold were drivers and putters! That's all you need for miniature golf or the driving range. To play on an actual course costs a small fortune. My room also contained a television with a coin device on it. Assuming that being in the boonies required money in order to watch TV, I dropped in a 100 yen coin, turned on the set, and surfed around. That's when I found the porno station that digitally obliterated anything one might be interested in seeing. We were picked up the next day by Igarashi, Sakai-San's foreman, and taken in a small bus to Sakuma, a breeder of gosanke. His facility was relatively small and had only one indoor pond devoted to three and four year old fish. His only other indoor tanks were used to house tosai (yearlings). Besides a number of fairly large outdoor tanks used to grow out fingerlings, there was a group of three small sheltered vats that contained large fish, some of which had just been in the All Japan Show. I should explain that if a hobbyist has a fish that he wants to enter in the show, he has the breeder or dealer from whom he purchased the fish enters it for him. The ONLY type of show in which a hobbyist can enter his own fish is a ZNA show. Japan successfully goes to great lengths to separate hobbyists from dealers and to prevent encroachment by either group upon the other. Sakuma-san netted up many of the show entrants for us to look at, and they were quite beautiful, especially seen close up in bowls. The one fish for sale that caused me to salivate was a five or six year old doitsu goshike that cost $7500. In case you're curious, it's still there. Next we were off to Maryama, another small breeder whose facility was twice as big as Sakuma's. He too breeds gosanke. He bowled two beautiful four and five year old kohakus that sold for $4000 and $5000. Although it sounds like a lot, they would have gone for double that here in the states. It was at this time when one of the gentlemen on the tour, a koi novice, stepped on what he thought was a rigid bamboo mat and fell into one of the small display ponds up to his waist. After the laughter died down, there was the dilemma of what to do with a very cold wet gaijin. Mrs. Maryama took him down the road to the family house, grabbed her husband's one dress suit, and gave our wet friend the dress pants. She also gave him a pair of her husband's undies, some socks, and a pair of shoes, all of which luckily fit. Later, Joe Zuritsky purchased some tosai for his own shop while the rest of us waited in eager anticipation for the next stop in the journey - Matsunosuke! As the bus pulled into Mr. Sakai's facility, he and his beautiful wife came outside in the lightly falling snow to greet us. I don't mind admitting that I was truly excited. After all, I was finally visiting one of the three breeders whose farms I'd always wanted to see, and I knew that I was going to see great koi produced by one of the industry's masters. The Sakais welcomed us and invited us into the small sitting room adjacent to their office where Mrs. Sakai served us coffee. All of us gathered around a small table that was supported by a kerosene heater that was going full blast, and once we were comfortable, Mr. Sakai, who speaks no English, started to instruct us about his fish. In case you're wondering how we understood what he was saying, Joe Zuritsky's interpreter, a lovely multilingual Korean-American named Agnes, started translating for us. Although most koi possess fukurin (a type of skin) to one degree or another, Sakai claims that he is responsible for breeding fish that produce more of it than those of other competitors.
He then pulled and bowled some of his upper end sankes, the most difficult of all fish to breed. There's and old saying in Japan that there are a lot of former sanke breeders. Sakai, of course, is famous for his taisho sanke, and the ones he showed us were stunning. Unlike earlier examples that I'd seen in other shows and magazines, the beni on these fish was not the yellow-orange that I was used to seeing. The other difference was that the sumi (black) spots were larger and more powerful than the small almost freckle-like sumi that he used to be known for. As each of them swam around in the bowl, an almost metallic reflection was seen just above the lateral line of each fish. According to Joe Zuritsky, this was "Matsunosuke silver." My best guess is that he bred some gin rin back into his brood stock. Whatever the origin, it certainly was unique and it added to the exquisite beauty of each koi. Finally, Mr. Sakai dazzled us with two other varieties he's famous for in Japan: goshike and koromo. Again, each of the fish that were bowled was stunning. Of all the fish that he bowled for us, I remembered seeing at least five of them at the All Japan Show. After viewing his very best, we were taken to his main facility, a huge greenhouse with six huge ponds inside. Although there were some two year olds swimming about, the majority of the fish were three years old and up. Now the fun began as each of us looked for possible purchases. Gene Ewy and a fellow traveler from Arizona each bought lovely kohakus, and Joan and Bob Finnegan bought a lovely three-year-old sanke with deep urushi (black lacquer) sumi. Finally, Agnes called me over and asked me what, if anything, I was interested in and how much money I had to spend. I generally don't ask what someone spends for a koi unless they seem to want to tell anyway and even then I usually avoid the question. Likewise, I no longer tell what I spend - it just doesn't seem to be the point, although others would have you think it's so. Anyway, to cut to the chase, Mr. Sakai selected an absolutely gorgeous goshiki (it's what I really wanted) with a Zen-like three-step pattern and beautiful white face. An anchor worm was scraped off and a paintbrush dipped in a slurry of potassium permanganate dabbed onto the wound. I took the appropriate photos that every proud new owner takes and turned the fish over to the handlers. Later on in the afternoon I picked out a one-year-old tategoi ai koromo. They are currently in Philadelphia awaiting warmer weather. Jim Reilly and I left on our own the next day because we each had to get back to work. Before going to the airport for our evening flights, we headed for Miyoshiike, a dealer located thirty minutes from Narita. Miyoshiike usually runs full-page ads on the inside cover of Nichirin, the ZNA magazine, and Rinko, the Shinkokai publication. They are known for handling fish in all price categories, but they specialize in high quality collector fish. In fact, one of the reasons we stopped was so that Jim could pick up a trophy that he'd won with a Miyoshiike fish in the 1999 All Japan Show. As you enter the large, beautiful greenhouse filled with tropical plants, you pass by small vats on either side of the walkway that are populated with low priced fish. The first vat has $5 fish, the second has $10 fish, and so on until you get up to $200 koi. A large bridge with tables and chairs is situated over the two main viewing ponds and visitors can look down on the huge show quality fish. The two fish that Gene Ewy won kokugyo awards with in last year's show were in one of the vats. They also sold dry goods for a fraction of what we have to pay in this country, and most items were at least 40% cheaper. Finally, it was "post time" and we had to go to our respective terminals at the airport. Luckily, Kodama-san, the owner, kindly offered to drop us off, which was most kind. After having two previous trips to Japan fall through, it was exhilarating to finally make it to the home of both nishikigoi and the culture that made them possible. I've been fortunate to travel to many countries, but this trip will go down as one of the most memorable. Midwest
Pond & Koi Society |
