Too controversial to keep in the Knowledge thread

[markgardner]

Quote: Originally Posted by luke frisbee I've been reading this guy's blog (don't know who he is but it has been interesting) and most of the ponds in his snow pics are wind-swept clean The Yamakoshi Year But his pics around the houses show huge snowfalls...and the reason is????????????

Luke

In the autumn the ponds are drained and empty, then it snows and they fill up with snow. When it warms up the snow melts and fills them up with pure fresh snow water. There are virtually no ponds covered in ice with water beneath.

The snow this winter has been perhaps 2m deep on average.

In the most recent pics what may look like ice is actually the snow melting around the edges leaving a 'cone' of snow coming up from the bottom into the centre of the pond.

Mark

[markgardner]

Here's a pic taken 21st Feb, probably 1.5m of snow that is just following the contours of the land, and completely filling the mudponds.

[luke frisbee]

Well mark that pretty much shows what I was thinking....snow WILL get into place that aren't flat and/or out of the Wind..but once the ponds fill, or the ice forms at the tops of the ponds then the Snow doesn't lay up on the ponds.
I noticed some pics on your site that showed that pretty good.
Snow might be so thick that you have to exit the house from the second story balcony, but the ice on the lakes are clear.

[luke frisbee]

And mark your appearance here reminded me I hadn't read your blog today...and I just did and all the pics for today , March 25th, show " wind swept ice ponds" plenty of sunshine shine down on em....in the real Icwe-covered ponds I bet the fish all woke up at 7 am and and to them it was just another day under the ice, and they all didn't die

[KoiCop]

Quote: Originally Posted by luke frisbee And mark your appearance here reminded me I hadn't read your blog today...and I just did and all the pics for today , March 25th, show " wind swept ice ponds" plenty of sunshine shine down on em....in the real Icwe-covered ponds I bet the fish all woke up at 7 am and and to them it was just another day under the ice, and they all didn't die

I looked at Mark's pix for today, too -- and I'll bet the only pic of a water filled, ice covered pond with sleepy koi being awakened by the bright sunshine is in your imagination.

[luke frisbee]

Mark already stated that those ponds were emptied in the Fall and are gathering snow during the Winter months....

The photos show the interaction between snow and large flat areas of ice...Snow does not stay on them....nor would it on "the real Ice-covered ponds " which have koi in them.

[markgardner]

I'm not sure what the 'discussion' going on here is but let me explain what I've seen in the life of mud ponds since I arrived in Japan.

I arrived in Japan on 29th December, no snow on the low ground around Ojiya and when I woke up on 30th December it was raining.

Then it started to snow and snowed pretty much every day through to March.

It had snowed prior to my arrival, that I knew, in fact it started to snow 2 days after I left in November.

You can look at the earliest pics I posted and there was water/ice on mudponds, particularly if you look at sets of pics taken up at Tanaka Maruju. This came about due to earlier snows falling in the ponds and then melting.

Now, every single one of those ponds, bar one which has an overflow from a fish house, is filled with snow.

When a reasonably mild spell suddenly turns to snow and dumps 1m in a night the ponds don't have time to freeze up and have a layer of ice, they simply fill with snow and keep filling with snow.

The contours of the landscapes in the pictures covered with snow mirrors their snowless countours, everything just has an even covering. Through that they cut roads where they need to, but all around everything else is just covered in snow, one even thick blanket of snow.

I've mentioned in the blog that I'm working on the English translation of Nishikigoi Mondo. In that Fujita San states, literally, that the snow would crush the Koi kept in outdoor ponds. I questioned the translation when I was given it to read. Now I can see the winter relenting I can see that indeed, Koi left in outside ponds could be crushed by snowfall filling their ponds.

I'm just reporting what I've seen.

[luke frisbee]

Can I go back and change everything I said ....

[KoiCop]

Thanks for that, Mark. Hard for folks like us that live in places like Southern California and Florida to fully comprehend the severity of winter in Niigata/Yamakoshi.

As for the sub-text of the conversation going on here, it started on KoiShack, continued to Newt's and recently resurfaced here.

Hopefully, this portion of JR's post (#29, this thread) should suffice to explain:

Luke, you disappoint me when you pull this twisting stuff as if we are all too dumb to recognize when you are spinning--

The original debate/conversation was about removing a winter cover to give koi more light in midwinter during thaws. I suggested that this was counter productive as it rouses the fish in stasis when they will have to return to that condition once again very soon and moving around wastes valuable energy stores. And a poor trade off to boot; to trade a few degrees of heat gain for a distruption of stasis. Do you remember that???
In response, you brought in the old methods of how koi used to be kept by Japanese, that I had discussed before.
And now you are pulling a 'hot air tactic' of trying to rouse the crowd regarding cruel methods the Japanese used to use. Hey Einstein, the alternative in those days was to leave them out under ice! Experience taught those mean Japanese that covering the koi or bringing them in and placing them in vats under the floors of the house allowed a greater chance of predictable survival than leaving them in the reserviors.

Having watched March of the Penguins, Luke thought he'd all the ammo needed to rebut JR's argument --but you, luckily, have come to JR's rescue just in the nick of time.

[luke frisbee]

yeah and you believed the part about the ice crushing the koi too?