I’m currently leading my annual Essence of Autumn leaves photo tour.  As is my habit, I’m leading my group off the beaten path to keep away from tourist pollution.   My participants, my team, and I are enjoying a beautiful Niigata prefecture golden hour with koi ponds disguised as rice terraces.  You might think it’s crazy that I would go to the Niigata highlands for koi ponds, but I promise you that’s exactly where they are.  These ponds are actually placed there for koi breeding.  Japanese have found that natural settings with natural lighting have a positive effect on koi propagation compared to the captivity of indoor cement swimming pools.  With the falling temperatures of winter, there’s no choice but to move the koi from these ponds and place them in swimming pools.  Niigata is hands down the leading Japanese prefecture for spotting, photographing, and purchasing koi, and the prices for these prized fish vary, starting at $100, but in auctions, these swimming jewels of Japan have been sold at auction for over $200,000 dollars.  Niigata is the cradle for nishikigoi, which are the multi-colored varieties of Amur carp (Cyprus rubrofuscus), and they are kept as one means of decoration in koi ponds across Japan and the entire world.  If you walk down to ponds like the ones you see in the photo attached to this newsletter, you’ll see nets covering the ponds so hawks and other birds of prey don’t poach prized nishikigoi koi.  Without a local like myself to introduce using connections that I’ve cultivated over decades of time spent living in these communities, the chances of an international photographer getting access to these koi ponds among the Niigata highlands would be zero.  My professional driver, Gakuhari lives about 30 minutes from the koi ponds, making the exploration of this region even easier.  Thousands upon thousands of international photographers visit this region dreaming to spend time among the koi ponds, but my team and I have made that dream come true.