Shirihoudai

Took a trip to the South Bay (Torrance, CA) area and it wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the Asahi fancy koi in Gardena.  I’ve been visiting this place since I was a little kid and its nice just to watch these magnificent koi - its very relaxing.  Someday my backyard will look like this place.

Some pictures:

Some things never change. . . this is the front of the store: 

Faded sign to show you where to park:

One of their display ponds:

They also have pictures on the wall of custom ponds that they built for customers.  Some are super nice.

pictures of the koi:

 The young ones - still a bit outside my pricerange though:

Since I have complete control of this <evil laugh>bwahahahahahaha</evil laugh> of course I’m going to talk about my favorite hobby:  fishkeeping.   And I couldn’t think of any better way to tie in fishkeeping with Japan than to introduce Takashi Amano. 

This guy is a fishtank designing god!  More specifically, aquascaping - the practice of underwater landscaping using live plants.   Living works of art.  Someday I’ll have tanks that look like this:

Picture of a bed of glosstigma, rummynose tetras and discus courtesy of dude at myfishtank.net. He even got to see the real deal in person in Niigata! damn him!

Here is the official site of Takashi Amano’s HQ.

A couple of Amano’s books are in the Shirihoudai store that make great coffee table books.