| Day 10 – 22 October 2007
We arrived at the Hiroshima Airport Hotel very late last night after a about 5 hours on the plane and another 45 minutes in the taxi. It was late and we were tired. Nobody was particularly hungry, we just wanted to get settled in and go to bed and then the unthinkable happened…..the hotel did not know about us….there were no reservations. Now if there is one thing that I have learned on this trip then it is that the Japanese is very helpful so we went to the restaurant to have a beer and wait out the process. We ordered some noodles and Japanese pizza which was quite weird as they put fresh lettuce leaves as well as tomato quarters on after the pizza comes out of the oven. You then eat the “salad” off the top of the pizza and then get to the crust or as somebody in the party did, you toss the salad and only eat the pizza.
Somehow the hotel managed to find us accommodation and everybody went to bed. These rooms were a bit larger than some of the others that I have visited to date. Like the other hotels, the air-conditioning was hopelessly under powered and the windows could not open but at least the bed was comfortable.
Breakfast was great. I saw some Kellogs Corn Flakes for the first time since leaving home. I also had some yoghurt and canned fruit and even had toast and marmalade. There is a lot to be said for Japanese food but ohhhhh for the comforting tastes of home. After breakfast we were collected by taxi and after a short 20 minute drive, arrived at Sakai Fish Farm. First impression is that Sakai is not much different from the other farms I visited to date but then you step out of the one greenhouse and there is another one and another one and another one ……. one. The place is huge and I would estimate that if you put all the farms that Koibooi has visited in Niigata together, then you might get to the Sakai scale.
I saw hundreds of thousands of Kujaku fry of about 7cm being culled. Next to the Kujaku were 8 more fry ponds all waiting to be culled. I saw a water treatment plant that can provide fresh water for a small city and I saw koi, thousands of them of all sizes, of extremely good quality. Some of the largest koi were almost a meter long and the quality of red and black was phenomenal. These jumbo koi were expensive and one could easily pay upwards of R300 000 for a single koi. I was however very surprised to see the vast quantities of very high grade koi at extremely good prices.
It was eye opening to see a koi farm of this size and scale and the afternoon Koibooi witnissed history being made as the harvest from one of the best two year old mud ponds were brought into the greenhouse for sorting. The body shape on these fish was absolutely amazing. None of the skinny two year old koi of Niigata was present here. These koi were the product of very careful breeding with selected bloodlines and raised in low density mud ponds with the top 16 month old koi measuring in at 70cm. For R25k landed in South Africa you can buy one of her sisters (or brothers) and be assured that it is still going to grow like crazy and take some serious prizes in its future.
The evening Sakai took all the koi buyers that was visiting the farm out for dinner and it was a real mix of nationalities. Sitting at the table were Japanese, English, South Africans, an American, a Taiwanese and some Belgians. To top it all we were eating at an Italian restaurant.
Some US Chardonnay was consumed and some Italian red wine flowed but Koibooi has to confess that there is just no wine like the South African wine – even the English agreed to this which was surprising as the topic of the disallowed try in the World Cup seem to come up just about every 30 minutes and for them to admit anything good about SA at this stage was amazing.
Tomorrow is another Sakai day and there are plans that we will be attending the harvest of his biggest mud pond. This is Koibooi signing off. |