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Day 13, Thursday, October 24
This morning I took this picture about 1/2 of the way up the mountain at a scenic overlook, located on the 13th of 17 hairpin turns on the road up the mountain to Koda's. Kelly and Janel, customers from California, met me in Niigata after doing business in Tokyo. They traveled with me from Wednesday to Monday.

We're at Brocade Carp Farming Harasawa. That's me with Seitaro Harasawa and his son standing behind 10 bowls of koi I selected.

Samples of what I bought there.

We didn't buy any of these, but look at the size of this monster 110 cm chagoi! That's a 1 meter diameter bowl and it barely fits. This fish won jumbo champion at the Nogiosai show two days later.

We were looking for large fish for several customers. Here's a 'small' 36" ginrin ochiba.

Seitaro's son sorting the 2-year-old koi just in from the mudpond.

The koi bagged up and ready to go.

Next stop is Sakazumi. He's bagging up some of our purchase.

We stopped for ai goromo, but ended up buying 4 tosai doitsu showas.

Kelly and Janel at the gateway to the koi area, doing the tourist thing.

Our next stop was to see Isa Hajame, a world-renowned showa breeder. Here's him and his son in his greenhouse.

These are the 2-year-old showas we bought there. Notice the very high quality almost kohaku-like tatagoi hi that he's famous for.