I was looking through a koi magazine one day and came upon a picture of a breeder wearing a shirt that looked like it said Coca-Cola. It was written in the same front and everything, but something looked wrong about it. So, after closer inspection, I realized his shirt said Cocaine. The best part about it is that this breeder has somebody who speaks very good english working for him. But, I guess it just goes to show that just because you can speak english, doesn't necessarily mean you can read or write it. Or, maybe his employee doesn't even care, or its his own little inside joke (the employee's).

The other night I was one breeding duty with Toshi. We always check the fertility of the male oyagoi, and also if the eggs were fertilized after spawning. We came across a particular male showa with a very high sperm count, jokingly Toshi renamed it Devin, because it was so "genki"! We'll see if the name sticks (pun totally intented).

We were talking about music one night, and came upon the subject of lyrics. Probably cause we started singing keitai karaoke (almost as fun as real karaoke, btw keitai = cell phone). They thought that when M.C. Hammer says, "Can't touch this." at the begining of the song You Can't Touch This, that he was actually saying "Kentucky". "Kentucky" also happens to be the name of the KFC chain here in Japan. Anybody else see the irony in that besides me? The Japanese are so racist without even trying. I'm not even going to get into what they thought the lyrics for the Spice Girls were.

I went out one night with my friend, she brought along her husband and one of her co-workers. Her & her co-worker both speak really good english, so her co-worker & husband wanted to meet me. We went to a tonkatsu restruant, the restruant gave us a mortar & pestle to grind up some black pepper. So my friends husband starts making masturbation motions with his mortar & pestle (keep in mind I just met him, and he wasn't even drunk). My friend's co-worker looks up and says, (in English, then explaining to him in Japanese) "They call that polishing the apple in America." I just about spit my drink all over the table, did not see that coming. How the hell did she know slang for masturbation?

A lot of Japanese people give me sh*t for not having a girlfriend, sometimes people I don't even know. They're all like, "You're a gaijin, japanese girls should be throwing themselves at you!" I tell them it doesn't work that way, but they never believe me. One particular day after taking some heat from an old guy, he turns around and tells me, "Ahh, your still young, and have perfectly functionable hands. You don't need a girlfriend." This leads me to believe that he has arthritis and/or parkinson's.

Everyday we do "kamasu" on the fry ponds. "Kamasu" is the act of taking a metal bar (sometimes with chains tried to it) and dragging it around the edge of the pond. We do this to mix the mud with the water, stirring up food for both plankton and the fry. Along with kamasu, everyday we give the fry powdered food, unless the pond has enough plankton to support the fry.

Everyday I don't get to see my pond, becuase Marudo koi farm has 20+ fry ponds, that is a lot of ponds to take care of. But on my days off I always go and check my pond, spend time doing general maintenance, do kamasu and give the fry food. It had been about 2 days since I last saw my pond, so right away in the morning on my day off I headed over to it.

It has been raining heavy here a lot lately, we have entered Japan's rainy season. It runs from about midway through june to midway through july, the cool rain is a nice break from the heat and humidity. But, when I arrived at my pond I noticed that because of the rain, there had been a small land slide directly into my pond! Luckily though, because it was raining heavy, I think most of my fry were hanging out in the center of the pond. Usually they hang out around the edge, because that is where they get fed. So I don't think I lost any or many fry to the small land slide.

On the bright side, my fry are growing well, but not too fast. They are up to about 1.5 - 2 cm long. Which is pretty good considering that they were fed only artifictial food because the plankton never really did get established in my pond.

I guess it holds true what they say about challenges, "you learn from failure, not from success". Lesson learned this week: Those weeds I sprayed this spring I probably shouldn't have raked up clean. If I left them to just dry out then they probably would have helped stabilized the ground, and I probably wouldn't have had a land slide. Lucky for me damage was minimal, it could have been much worse.

So I've already explained that we use chicken poop in the fry ponds as food for plankton that the koi fry eat. Well apparently the big koi like to eat poop too, I learn something new everyday. So today we went to Kaki to dump keifun (as it is called in Japanese) in the nisai, sansai, and yonsai ponds there.

Unlike having the luxury of the keifun being in bags weighing 15 kg from the local garden supply store. Today we had a big stinky (wasn't really for me though "farm life", but everybody else sure complained about the smell) pile of it thats been sitting under a tarp for who knows how long at Kaki. Lets just say it was growing moss and all sorts of other weird colored organisms, thats how long; almost liquid state like jello.

So with shovel in hand we scooped it and dumped it around the edges of the ponds, where the koi can rut in it. And I guess... eat it. *long pause* Supposedly it helps with their colors, or we just can't think of a better way to throw away a pile of chicken poop. Where did we get it from anyway?

There is a crematorium right next to Kaki, located a little bit lower than the pond area itself (terraced into the mountain). So just as we were finishing playing with the poo, one of the guys suddenly says, "Its time to go!" while pointing in the direction behind me. I was thinking to myself, why in such a rush, usually we walk around and check all the ponds & fish before heading back. Then I looked behind me... There was a cloud of smoke rolling towards us from the crematorium. Yea, we kinda throw all the tools in the back of the truck and sped out of there.

To bad Mezaki wasn't working with us today, he & I are into the heavier types of metal (death, black and so on). We couldn't wetted ourselfs with the pond water, actually we would have been fine with the sweat on our bodies cause it so fricking humid here. Then we could walk into the cloud. Wet body + body ashes = instant (and literal) corpse paint! Too bad we don't have a band.

I wonder how the colors are going to look on the koi from Kaki (AKA Crematorium Pond) this fall?

My parents called me and told me our dog died. :( She was suffering from a tumor, not sure what kind, because I left before it really developed. Which in some ways is kind of good, because all of my memories of her are of when she was happy & healthy. It makes me feel bad for the rest of my family though.

Callie was an Australian Shepherd, a great dog and friend. We had her for four years, I was only around for three, becuase I left for Japan to study. I am unsure how old she was, I think somewhere around 8 to 10 years old. We acquired her from the farm next door when they moved to Florida, with all the hair she had and the heat in Florida we didn't think she would like it down there. Callie had become very attached to our family when we moved in, she would come from the neighbors house everyday to play we us. We would have to walk her home every night, until the neighbors moved away and gave her to us.

Callie wasn't the same dog when I visited home earlier this month. She wasn't the usual playful and friendly dog, and she wasn't eating well. She would still get up and chase the cats around though, but that is the only thing that remained of the dog I remembered. I'm glad she didn't have to suffer very long.

Callie you will be missed...

Last year while I was here helping with the harvesting, Marudo told me that when I came again in the spring that he would give me a pond to try my hand at raising some fry in. So this year after arriving Marudo gave me a couple ponds to choose from to be my own. I chose the smallest one, cause its primarily just going to be me working on/at it. (That is unless I get a gf, then I can make her help me. haha, that would be so (male) japaneseish of me!)

Next I had to choose which type of koi I wanted to raise, I wanted to do Gosanke, but which? Marudo wanted me to do Chagoi, but I twisted his arm enough to let me do Showa. Later I found out that Chagoi are one of the most difficult types to raise. Because they change color so much as they grow, making culling very difficult.

Then I had to choose which Oyagoi I wanted to use, my first choice was Raijin. This would have been the first year of using Raijin as an Oyagoi so nobody knew what to expect. But, Raijin didn't spawn, I was disapointed and had to choose a new Oyagoi to use. Next I chose Kurohime, usually Kurohime produces many black fry, hence the name "Black Queen". But this year Marudo thinks he made a mistake, because the majority of the fry from Kurohime this year were red. We almost didn't have enough black fry, I would have had to choose another new Oyagoi. But there was just enough black fry left over from culling for me, about 10,000.

Before releasing the fry into my pond I asked Marudo if there was anything special I had to do with the water. A couple days before I spread "keifun" (chicken poop) in my pond for planton food, so I was wondering if I had to do before letting the fry go. But Marudo said no, you don't need to do anything special.

[Fast Forward] While eating dinner:
Marudo asks me,"Hey, did you test pH of your pond before releasing the fry?"
Me,"What? No... You told me I didn't have to do anything special before letting the fish go."
Marudo, " You didn't test the pH? OMG all of your fry might be dead."


The next day I went to go check on my fish, all of them were still kicking and doing good, so I guess I lucked out. But there wasn't much plankton in the pond, that kinda sucks because the fry grow way faster when eating natural food as opposed to fake. So I stirred up the mud around the edge of the pond, as to provide food for the small amounts of planton that are there. I also gave the fry some powder food too before heading back.

Today I went back and the fry are still doing good, but there is little to no planton in the water column. My solution? I stole plankton (after asking) from the pond next to mine (Marudo's pond). I also stirred up the mud again, and gave the fry some more powdered food.

I'll update this blog on the progress of my pond. Raising, culling, ect. Who knows, maybe this fall you can be the lucky owner of a Japanese bred, American raised (in Japan), limited edition Showa tosai, brought to you by Marudo koi farm and Devin! (don't get you hopes up)

Stay tuned to see what Devin is going to do next, you never know whats going to happen.

Lately lots of breeding & culling. We artificially spawn the koi, so we have more controll over the results, though we have already had a couple accidental natural spawns because someone forgot to check the fish. I'm not going to say any names though. After spawning we keep the eggs in the same water that the oyagoi were in until we can see eyes developing inside the eggs. Once eyes have developed we transfer the spawning matts with the eggs attached to them to a hatching tank that is lined with a net. When the koi hatch we wait a couple days (feeding them brine shrimp during this time) before releasing them out in the ponds. Or in the chase of showa, we cull them, and only release the black fry out in the ponds.

So the last couple of days we have been culling showa fry. For the most part the fry are either all red (in reality yellwish, like egg yolks), black (or mostly black but with some "red"), or white (clearish). We pick up only the black ones, because the other ones will probably develope into (worthless) kohaku, or shiromuji (even more worthless!). We have a vacuum pump rigged up with air line and a bottle. The air line is fixed into a cork and pushed into the bottle top, to create a vacuum. With this system we just suck the black fry up and they collect in bottle. Making life much easier so we don't have to try and use a net to pick up all the black fry, the fry are only about 50-80mm long, so it would be pretty difficult to use a net.

I needed to escape Japan and see what regular size people looked like, so I decided to go visit a friend of mine in California. And my family in Minnesota before flying back to Japan. In short it translates to: too many airplanes in too few of days.

On the 4th I flew to L.A. to visit Kaz Takeda, the man who helped spark my interest in koi. He suffered from cancer this spring and had to have one of his kidneys removed because of it. He recovered, but I wanted to go visit him again before he dies, cause he is starting to get up there in age (even for a Japanese guy). I had a lot of fun with Kaz, good food (I was dying for some Mexican food, since there is none in Japan), good stories, wierd people (I saw enough weird Californians again to keep me satisfied for another year), and somehow I even managed to get attacked by a couple cockroaches!

I left Cali on the 5th and flew the red eye flight (cause I'm cheap/poor, its really not helping trying to find a gf in Japan, $-) equals Japanese smilly face) to Minnesota. A lot of things can change in 3 months, your older brother turns 20, your younger brother turns into a pro dirtbike racer, your dad grows a mustache and looks like Luigi from Mario Bros. Your mom grows a mustache and looks like Mario, and you favorite radio station turns into a love song station (the last one is true, only one is false, you guess which one).

I thought I was going to fly home to rest and catch up on times with my family, but I know my dad better than that. So of course he put me to work, mind you that was after 2 airplane rides totaling 13 & 1/2 hours up in the air. My mom wasn't too happy about that, she really wanted to spend time with me and hear all my stories, but my dad made sure to have none of that. When it came time for me too leave my mom was like, "What, what, what? Your already going? You've only been here..." Me, " No mom, I've been here a while, it just that I've been out working. So you haven't seen me." I was pretty tired by the time I headed back to Japan, I even slept on the plane for the first time. Which really sucked becuase for the first time I got to sit next to a cute girl too!

I flew back to Japan on the 9th and arrived on the 10th, even though it was still the 9th back in the states. Japan is in the future you know...

Living in Japan is a lot like living in the 1980's, or atleast I think it its. I don't really remember much from the 80's cause I was too busy pooping in diapers. Anyways... A lot of it has to do with fashion, hair styles, trends, technology, and the list goes on and on.

Fashion & Hair styles are the most noticable thing that makes you feel like your living in the 80's. Everybody's got their tight pants, baggy shirts, swatches, and even L.A. Kicks! Its a sad world when little Japanese people are running around with 10 watches on each arm, comparing how many laces they have on their shoes. Then there are also the girls (mostly high school students) who wear sweat suits, so they look like Flash Dance. Flannel over shirts are starting to become fashionable too, maybe Japan is shifting into the early 90's? Mullets are still very popular, they are called soft mohikans here. "Mohikan" is Japanese for mohawk, and ironically, "bar code" is Japanese for a comb over.

A lot of trends that America went through in the 80's are still or just happening here. One such example would be the "Baby On Board" sticker / plaque thingys in cars. On average I probably see about 5 a day. They have the standard "Baby On Board" stickers along with the knock off joke ones. I saw saw one that said "Baby Rat On Board", I don't know if it was meant say that, or "Brat On Board"?

You would think that being Japan, where most of the world's new & good technology comes from that everybody would be living like the Jetsons. With fold up cars and a robot to clean your house. Granted some of the cars here are small enough that folding is unnecessary, though they are really good at origami.... I'll give it to them that most houses do have a flat screen TV, you'd think they would have a DVD or Blu-ray player to go along with it. But no, most household are still using VCR's! Why!?! Probably because Japan's population (mostly older generations) don't want to learn how use the new technologies and are happy with what they have (Coughjapanesepeopledontlikechangecoughcough).

Also, most household's don't even have a computer! Can you even imagine living without your computer? These people don't know what there are missing out on, especially with how perverted they are. Internet = Free Porn. But then again it probably has to do with how slow the internet connections are here, most areas can only get dail-up because the infrastructure for cable & other faster options isn't in place.

About the only peice of technology they don't use from the 80's would have to be 8-track players. Infact most people aren't really to far behind when it comes to car stereo technology. A lot of them have mini disc players, instead of CD players, so I guess the Japanese are ahead in that aspect. Maybe it is because the radio programs here suck out loud, but thats another rant for another day.