Car Cologne

I went with my friend to an auto parts store the other day, he had to buy some new cologne for his car. I'm not talking about some little leaf thingy that you hang from your rear view mirror either. No, I'm talking about a little jar full of magical wax that slowly melts and fills your car full of plentiful wonderful scents! Mostly its used to cover up the tobacco smell because Japanese people smoke more than Chinese factories making toys for your happy meals.

At the shop there was a whole aisle dedicated to car cologne, with every imaginable flavor you could think of and more, in your face Willy Wonka! There were a couple scents that struck me as odd. While picking up every scent and sampling it I came across one that smelled like those little disks in urinals, swear to God. After further inspection it turned out the name of this scent was "oriental". I can just see some Japanese guy going to America on vacation and taking in a baseball game. When using the bathroom, he realizes that the piss trough smells like his car. To bad I forgot to look where the "oriental" scent was made, because if its made in America, then that's just like the ultimate ownage. Not only is "oriental" the scent of our urinals, but there are people in Japan using that smell to cover up the stench from their tobacco!

The other scent didn't smell weird or nothing, just the name was odd. It was kind of a girly perfume smell, but the name was "musk". I don't know if its just me, but I would picture the smell "musk" being a little different. Like, if you have a younger brother and he moves into your basement. I think musk would be the word used to describe the smell of the basement after he's been down there in the darkness for a couple months, doing who knows what. Or maybe, if you've ever gone to a nursing home, there is that weird lingering smell of old people*. I would think that too would be considered "musk", not some girly perfume.


*Everybody knows the smell, cause you know when you were a kid your parents used to drag you to the nursing home kicking and screaming to go see your grandparents. If you've never gone before, or long suppressed those frightening memories, I'll merrily remind you. Your grandparents are always in the back somewhere, never up front near the check in desk, never. So you have to trek through hordes of old people that are reaching out trying to suck the youthfulness out of you like some kind of mummy/zombie mix. While you are suffering through that, you have to endure the horrible stench of a mix of bed pans, dying skin, rotting teeth, and I don't really care to know what else. Its horrible, horrible horrible! Please parents, don't bring your kids to the nursing home, bring your parents to your kids. I sure your parents would like to get out sometime too. With your help we can prevent childhood psychological trauma.

I'm going to go cry myself to sleep now, feel free to join me. Remember, its okay to cry.

What's Happening in the Koi World?

Most of the culling is finished, we just have a hand full of ponds that need to be culled one last time. While doing the 3rd cull on the gosanke ponds we separated the middle grade koi from the high grade koi and only released the high grade koi back into the ponds. We brought the middle grade koi to Sanbusho. They'll stay indoors for the rest of the season and winter until they will be sold and shipped out next spring.

With culling for the most part done, we have turned our attention to cleaning and fixing up. A typhoon came through a little while ago, before it struck we re nailed down the roof on all the houses at Sanbusho. If we hadn't, most of the sheets probably would have blown off in the strong winds we had.

Also at Sanbusho we have been putting up new siding inside one of the house. We also redid the filter a little bit. Along with cleaning the tanks and the whole koi house in general. It looks pretty good, and next we'll move on to the other koi house to clean them in preparation for the harvest coming up.

Still busy, busy, busy...

Devin's Pond

I culled my pond for the final time (3rd cull, for those that haven't been counting) this growing season. My fish are about in the 15-17 cm range, and I'm pretty happy with how they are turning out. I culled down to about 110 fish, from 10,000 this spring /early summer. I cut way back on food as to not grow the fish too fast. If I grow them to fast they will out grow their hi, it usually doesn't come back. Don't really want a pond full of shiro utsuri...