Visiting Koi Hobbyist 2025 Manabu Saito (Fukushima Prefecture)

Three years since starting, “I can’t live without koi anymore”
— Pools, tanks, various ways of keeping them.

The biggest challenge in keeping koi is building a pond. Even if you want to make a concrete pond, it’s not easy to acheive. Because of this, many koi hobbyists use various types of containers at home—not only ornamental fish tanks, such as glass or FRP tanks, but also other containers originally designed for different purposes.
Among these, frame pools represented by the “INTEX” brand have rapidly gained popularity in recent years. They offer sufficient size and durability for koi keeping, and above all, they are affordable, significantly suggesting the potential for expanding the koi-keeping community.
Manabu’s main pond is also of this type, and over the three years since he started keeping koi, the number of other containers inside his greenhouse has steadily increased. His circle of friends, centred around his regular koi dealer, has also grown, and now he is thoroughly enjoying his hobby.

Keeping koi in a 4.5-meter frame pool.
Renovated a greenhouse originally used for orchid cultivation.

The first time I came across Manabu Saito’s name was at the 2023 Tohoku-Hokkaido Young Koi Show, where he won as the Grand Champion in the 50bu category. Then, the following spring in 2024, the Phoenix Award at the International Junior Koi Show left a strong impression because Hironobu Fujita, Fujita Fish Farm in Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture, won the big prize at the national koi show for the first time. When I heard about it, I learnt that at that time he had only been raising Nishikigoi for two years.
Time passed, and it was now 2025. While looking for a topic for my Visiting Koi Hobbyist series, I asked Hironobu about the situation of koi hobbyists in Fukushima Prefecture. He responded with strong words, saying, “Among our customers, Manabu’s passion is top-class.” So, the day before the Tohoku-Hokkaido Young Koi Show on 1st June this year, I decided to visit Manabu’s home.