How it began...
Many years ago, my dad, Mike Swanson, along with my mom, Janel, would travel all over the Twin Cities looking for high quality Koi. When they couldn't find any like the ones in the Koi magazines, my dad decided that he wanted to go to Japan to buy Koi. Then my dad had an epiphany, he thought to himself, "Hey, if I'm looking for high quality Koi, then other people must be too." He sat down to and had a talk with my brother Devin and I. He asked us if we would like to start a business that would allow us to travel the world and meet hundreds of interesting people. Devin and I thought about it for 2/10th of a second and said, "you bet'ch ya!"
We moved a few months later to a rural part of Minnesota. The farm my parents had bought had 2 barns and a motorcycle shop. My dad started construction of his new Koi pond only after 2 weeks of living at his new house. Soon afterwards, Devin and I started gutting the motorcycle shop to make room for the Koi tanks and filter systems. Our other brother, Tayler, helped too. Devin and I worked very hard for long hours so that we could finish construction before our first trip to Japan. We were packing our bags at the same time the epoxy paint was drying on the tanks.
The flight to Japan was long. Even though we were lucky enough to have a non-stop flight, it was still 12 hours. When you get there, you have to go through customs and then you have to travel to the other side of the island by train. That first week in Japan, we drove all over Nagoka and Ojiya city looking for Koi. Our guide was Kaz Takeda. The first breeder that we visited was Suda. He had lots of Kohakus and Platinum Ogons in his ponds. One breeder that sticks out in my mind is Yamazaki, we bought our fist Doitsu Yamabuki Hariwake from him. Devin and I also took the tour of his family's mushroom factory. We got to see how the mushrooms are grown from start to finish.
After our week in the Niigata Prefecture, we went sightseeing around Japan. We went to Osaka and got to see the worlds only whale shark that is kept in a tank. It was surreal looking at one of those in real life, usually you only get to see them on t.v.
After Osaka, we spent a couple days in Hiroshima. We went to the A-bomb memorial and saw what the destruction was like first hand. Most kids only get to read about it in textbooks. Then we went to the island of Miyajima. I had never been to more of a beautiful place in my life. It is home to the famous Torii gate that stands in the water. It is said that there never has been any births of deaths on the island. (I bet there has been a few close calls) The main mountain on the island, Mt. Misen, is 1,700 feet high. We walked all the way up one side and all the way down the other. Going down was actually harder because we had to take thousands of old stone steps down. All of us were very sore the next day.
Then we went back to Tokyo. We spent a couple days touring the city. We went to the Sony headquarters and the Emperors palace. After that we went back to the airport and headed home. At the same time, one of the largest lakes in Japan that houses their food carp had an outbreak of KHV (Koi Herpes Virus). Japan shut down all of the imports and exports of fish. The Minnesota DNR (Department of Natural Resources) required that we get the Koi test for KHV, SCV (Spring Viremia of Carp) and Asian Tapeworm. All of the breeders went in for testing at the same time (All of them passed), but it took us 6 months to get our test results.
Our Koi arrived the day before Easter. It was amazing to see all of the fish swimming around in the tanks. It was very rewarding to see how all of our hard work paid off. -Michael Swanson
|
