The afternoon with Koelle Zoo - Kaneko

On Thursday afternoon, having finished at the Marusei jumbo holding facility - http://www.niigata-nishikigoi.com/node/706 - we headed back to Ojiya.

First stop was planned to be Kawakami in Uragara.  Due to work being carried out on bridge across the river that runs through the village we couldn't drive there and that, coupled with the fact Chris of Ornafish suggested there was nothing that would interest the Koelle Zoo guys at the farm, we carried on past and next stopped at Sakazume.  Whilst there were some Koi of interest Sakazume san wasn't there so we carried on up to Koguriyama and visited Hiroi.  Again there were Koi of interest but Chris suggested a visit to Kaneko before getting involved in bowling Koi at Hiroi so that's what we did.

After a short discussion a deal was done to pick out 36 Koi from this pond.

Can't beat getting your hands wet with Koi.

A sample box of 6 of the 36 Koi selected.

The adjacent pond contained larger higher quality Koi and the guys started to select a few from it.

The following 4 Koi were purchased.  Everyone assumed that they were sansai due to them being around 55cm.  Kaneko san surprised everone when he stated they were in fact nisai!

During our time at the facility the weather had changed dramatically from the wonderful morning with clear blue skies and snow was falling heavily.

We made our way back to Mushigame before heading back to Sakazume.  Unfortunately a deal couldn't be done on the earlier seen Koi and that concluded the day's buying.