Apart from anime, my first childhood contact with things Japanese were the Japanese koi that is a favourite hobby among all my family members. We have a koi pool in our garden back in KL. Would love to visit Nigata someday where the carps orfiginally come from. Any other nishikigoi fans out there?

Wow...

they are beautiful fishes...
they can be touched calmly aren't they?

They look like they would be yummy in a nice seafood soup.

Are these fish for eating? Or merely decoration.

You wouldn't want to eat these, they taste terrible. From what I've heard, the texture of their flesh when cooked is similar to soft rice. And besides, when fully grown, they can cost up to several thousands of dollars.

Some of them can be touched kim, but mine seems to be easily startled. I think the pond that we have is too small to allow them to meander around as much as they would like to. But certianly I have seen kois which are calm enough for you to stroke their tops while their swimming by. I don't think this is very common though.



Oh no no comradejing. Most people don't really eat them. Like BananaMaster rightly said, they are collectors's items. There are numerous koi shows organised worldwide, and the ones organised in Malaysia get interest from many other neighbouring countries like Singapore and Thailand, and vice versa. Whenever any of our koi dies, we bury them. Nothing to freaky or spiritual, it's just practical to let them decompose and nourish the earth.

There are many many kinds of Japanese carps, and certain classification has been givem according to their colour pattern. Some of the more famous ones include kohaku, sanke, showa etc. The basic colours are red, white and black. There are other colour variants. My favourite is the combination of red white and black, which means they are mostly kohaku and showa.


A kohaku

A sanke

The photo that I attached earlier was taken at my uncle's house. He has a big collection of kois and as you can see he collects many kinds of coloured koi. The ones in my house are mostly kohaku with some sanke, so there are mostly red and white with some black thrown in. The photo I found on the net below reminds me a lot of the koi pond I have at home.

AHRGH!!! that looks RAW

No cloudyski no. We don't use koi for sushi or sashimi

they are pretty, look like giant goldfish.
its good, you don't eat them. :-)

I do not know why, but my dad does not like them as much as he likes the gold fishy, well, they are much cuter, haha

I used to raise Koi. Had a very large pond that we build for them. And any koi can be touched softly if they are accustomed to it, which only takes every feeding every day for a very long time to get them used to it. For a while I even had some that would take food right off my palm... but alas if you stop with the contact for very long they forget easily.

Cool - I dig koi - they look really awesome - so do koi have origins in Japan/Nigata or are those only carps (or are carps the same as koi)?

Actually, I think I saw carp before... aren't they the kinds that the Chinese put into artifical ponds, too?

There are several of them at the public parks here. I have heard that eating them would incur a fine.
They really look like big goldfish to me....

Koi are actually just a breed of carp. but as you know, majority of carp are a trash fish, with no real coloring. even koi when first born are a full grey/blackish color. their coloring comes in as the fish ages and matures. which is another reason trying to raise prize Koi can be difficult. buying them young and then their coloring changes.
I was once told that out of several thousand new born carp, only a small handfull will end up with coloring

but I"m no expert

D

.... and of course I've heard that carp taste terrible

My kois were never tame enough to touch. I think it's cos we tend to throw the food pellet when feeding them. People think sharks go on eating fenzy? They've not seen hungry kois yet. Just voracious I tell ya.

Over the years there were some pregnat female kois, but we never separated them from the rest of the group. We aren't professional breeders and it's true what dat said- it's very difficult to spot the potential prize-winning koi when it's still a teeny-weeny fry. The koi eggs get eaten pretty quickly by the rest of the kois (and I'm sure by mommy koi too)

Yup, Niigata Japan is the region where the original kois come from. There are many koi farms and breeders that go back generations based there. It's quite out of the way from Tokyo, nut it shouldn't be too bad on the super-fast shinkansen train.




Photos show Niigata region, a typical koi farm and my fav kinds of koi: kohaku and sanke

I can spend hours just watching kois swim in a well-decorated and landscaped pond.

I love koi... but they are illegal in the state i live !

My uncle used to have this pond with koi... he used to feed them food from his hands.

They are definitely a pond fish because their colours are spectacular when you're looking down into the water... not so much the same effect if you have them in a fish tank...

Illegal? Goodness gracious. Which state is this?



I agree 100%. Looking as them sideways as you would in an aquarium, they look pretty lame. The more greenery and landscaping there is to the pond, the better.

oh - koi raising was harder than I thought - they look excellent, especially against a pure black-bottomed ponk then their color really contrast like dope.

Kohaku - that's the name of the dragon guy in Spirited Away - hah! what a great movie! fosho

It shouldn't be too surprising they are illegal in some places malaccan. They are a foreign organism and are subject to some pretty stiff import laws. The fear is that someone may not care for it properly and just dump it into the nearest body of water somewhere, possibly damaging the local system which mayn ot be able of handling a new life form introduced. I remember two summer ago, it was a somewhat big deal that there were these chinese snakehead fish(not the gangster) that somehow got into freshwater bodies of water in the US. They are very predatory fish and starting eating everything in the lakes

So you can see why places have bans on importing foreign fish.

Oh, I didn't realise the dragon was called Kohaku!

Is koi-keeping big in Vancouver? I hazard that it is cos there's a hyuuugee Asian community there, isn't there? The closest I got to Vancouver was Seattle.

I like your sig vn. People in Scotland say eh quite a bit as well . I've been to Nova Scotia on a uni trip and the Scottish influence is indeed quite remarkable, especially in the flag design.





I do remember reading about the snakehead fish incident. It's a shame if these got released accidentally but I'm sure there were also cases where people released them on purpose. How typical of people to be fickle with their pets! Yeah comradejing, I'm sure even the Japanese koi would cause havoc in local natural ecosytems were they to end up there. I was thinking earlier that the law related to this was one of the old antiquated quaint ones which served no purposes, like the ones that you tend to read in anecdotes and magazine-fillers. Obviously not.

Hahah - the word isn't really used in Canada - it's a sterotype - personally I have never heard anyone in Canada say "eh" other than parody sitcoms of the Canadian government - cool never new that about Scotland.

Yup the asian community here is big and koi are allowed in BC (the province I live in), also many people from the states love to travel to Canada to eat asian fruits because Canada doesn't restrict imports as heavily as the US.

Thanks (about my sig) I really dig yours too - I have a great respect for people who wear and cherish their traditional attire

Anyways back on topic - people who have koi or take take of their landscape gardens or other fish tend to be the more relaxed and peaceful people who like nature - keep it up

LOL. You got me there. Truth is not that many Scots say 'eh' either, especially not in posher Edinburgh areas. In Halifax, I did hear people say 'a-boout' though, which is also more prevalent in Scotland.

Right, let's make this thread abt koi. Not everyone can afford to buy purebred koi. So it is actually much more common for people to keep kois of mixed breeds and lower quality. Much cheaper and more readily available in the pet stores.

Koi are illegal in many places primarily because they are a kind of carp. Carp being such a hearty fish if they do get out into the ecosystem them survive overly well and choke out the natural inhabitants. Breed like mad and eat like crazy.

I suppose I may not know about the Western Canadian providences, but "eh" is used by many Canadians. All that I have known anyhow. But it's not so much a word as it is a verbal question mark. Sitcoms and the likes often over exaggerate is usage to a fair extreme, but it is definately used.

"You'll come to my house for a fish fry, eh?"
"We'll grill up some Koi."
"eh?"



D

LOL.
Overheard in a Scottish pub:
"So tonight's special is the fish and chips, eh?"
"Och aye; no haddock, just koi."
"Eh?"

Does anyone know is the Japanese carp originated from China? I ask because Chinese have this tradition of raising carp in gardens as well...And it usually is Japan borrowing from China and making it better or more famous...

I wouldn't be surprise, 777, if carps came from China.

You can eat koi and if you have a good chef it can be pretty good. I personally have never eaten a koi, though.

And of course, if you mentioning koi, don't forget that it also means LOVE. You can make some really lame jokes because of that. "Jinsei tatta hitotu dake no koi wo ushinatteshimatta...."/「人生たった一つの恋・鯉を失ってしまった・・・」 = "I lost the only love/carp in my entire life...."

LOL.

I'm pretty sure they did come to japan by way of China too. I remember reading that before it came to China, its original home was from the Persian region and it was brought to China via the Silk Route. Don't quote me on this though.