Today we were starting off at one of my favourite farms , Oofuchi ! Athough its a bit of a trip ,its always worth it , and i cant remember a time i diddnt come away with koi . We soon arrived and started filling bowls with koi, i had Kujaku , tancho sanke  , showa , doitsu platinum and a shiro utsuri .

Then the best doitsu kujaku i have ever seen  i heard the work expensive in Japanese , but diddnt worry , as this koi in this fish house diddnt usually come with telephone numbers as price tags . Usually the brothers have their discussion , come back to the vat , then go off and continue the price debate . The prices were very fair and we purchased all , except the kujaku , they hadnt done that , so another round of discussions took place , i started to have a bad feeling about it ! Always trust your gut feeling , the doitsu kujaku was more than most of the koi i had just purchased put together ,  i was stunned , how ever , its was absolutely stunning , great skin , nice pattern , but i had to pass ! Then it was off to the best fish house , where if they had a hot coffee machine , i could stay for hours and watch the koi here all day ! A soon as the air went off , i sw her , 62cm of yonsai tancho showa , bred from Dainichi bloodline . She was caught up with an asagi , doitsu gin matsuba and a 4 step kujaku . Once again , prices wee a little strange , the asagi which was the best we had seen all week , was not cheap , but fair we thought , but the gin matsuba and the kujaku , were again more or less the most expensive , and goes to show how the breeders rate their different varieties . Well , hold on , i said they were the most expensive , i hadnt been told the price of the tancho showa , dearer still , but i was in a good mood , it had been a great week , so treated myslef ! On another note , Chris from Kitsu purchased the asagi , a very serious example , so if your looking for one , give him a call ! 

      Leaving Oofuchi we headed towards our next breeder at Echigo Urasawa . The country road winds along a river , between all the mountains , and is beautiful and peaceful . Suddenly a heard a very loud horn sounded , i jumped out of my seat and was scared still , i thought a lorry was bearing down on us , a looked around and everyone was laughing their heads off , it was a train running a hundred yards away , i really did see my life flash before me , much to the amusement of everyone else ! It was so loud , ad they do it to be friendly so the agent said , friendly ??? i nearly had a heart attack the bloody idoits , which started everyone laughing again , after a few choice rants , i did see the funny side of it ! Any way , next breeder , Satoshi Tanaka . Well known for his kujaku , and of late his kin showa . We arrived and was made welcome , there were ponds full of high class koi, all except Kujaku . All this way up the motor way , for kujaku, and none to be seen , which seemed to amuse everyone gain , seems i was at the end of everyones amusement , but within a few hours , id be laughing at them . So i had some orders for kin showa , so i set around bowling some nice ones , and soon had kin showa , tancho showa and gin rin tancho showa , and  a nice little scaled hariwake . I was one short for the box , but had run out of koi i liked inthe pond, so a deal was struck for one out of his much higher grade , i then bought three sansai , a male ochiba of show quality , and two female kin showas . I said id like to buy them all ,  so he added it all up , and made a very nice offer , when the price is right and fair , there is no need to negotiate , and it was a fair offer . Due to all the travelling , it was late in the afternoon so we headed back down the motor way to koide , for our last visit(or so we thought ! )  of the day , to Takahashi . Famous for his showa , and beni kumonryu among others .

The sky had darkened , it started raining and the wind picked up , i thought we are in for a storm here , and a big one . In the mountains ,weather can change very quickly .By the time we reached Takahashi , it was windy , rain getting heavy and lightning and thunder , grim indeed. When we got into the fish house ,  We were offered to select through two levels of nisai , and decided to go into the better ones . I was taking my time , not walking back in the instant monsoon that had now developed . I soon had two bowls of nisai , of all varieties , too many to mention , so take a look at the videos ! As i was waiting for the koi to be moved , i could see everyone was deep in thought around a bowl , as i was finished , i notice the the thunder was getting louder , and thought its getting very noisy as well , the BANG , it was a bomb going off , the loudest thunder i had ever heard  , and everyone jumped like athletes and all were visably shaken except me , i thought it was hilarious , i said now you know how its feels . With videos and pics taken it was off to the hotel , well it was , the phone rang , it was Maruhiro , due to being busy tomorrow , he had harvested my mud pond , in this horrific storm  what a total mad man , then he wanted us to go to the farm , and watch them come off the van . It was late already , and we were all exhausted , but knew we had to go , as he had made a tremendous effort ! We arrived at the farm , and the whole team was waiting for us , but thats another story , for another day .......................Sorry , but we finished at 8.30 , and im behind on all the web work , so will do a blog specially on the Azukari project .