I always think that the good follows the bad , and as soon as i found out an appointment at Masaki for for first thing was confirmed to look at the gosai shiro utsuri , i know today was going to be great ! On our arrival we found Masaki in a good mood and ready to go ( he probably guessed what koi we were coming back to look at ! ) The fish was bowled , pics and video taken and then came down to the price , the price given was fair , but still a little high and he wouldnt budge as steve made him a fairlry good offer , steve duly picked up his bag and went out for a smoke and left Masaki comtemplating the thought of a non sale , after a short while Masaki gave a long speech explaining the quality of his shiro to the point of explaining that Omosako buys brood stock from him (Somthing we were very aware of already as ive been selling his fish for years , but its nice for the customers to hear it from the horses mouth ) Masaki then offered to meet Steve half way between the two prices and reminded us again that a fish of this quality would be 4 times the price down south ( somthing else we were already aware of ! ) Steve couldnt hide the smile on his face and nearly knocked me out the way trying to shake his hand , a very nice high point of the trip . Bearing in mind the quality of the fish we diddnt want it measured , but we were all in agreement that around 75cm was a good estimate . Apart from Shiro utsuri Masaki is very famous for Asagi , after buying a very high quality nisai there yesterday , i knew i had two customers that wanted the fish , so i explained and he shook his head and said i had bought all the nisai yesterday that were good and pointed to his outside pond and said sansai/yonsai . Within a few minutes we had what he said was one of his best sansai and yonsai in a bowl , another discussion about price and that was two more high class asagi on there way to Gatwick koi , these two were both females and over 50 and 60 respectively , so hope fully i can keep all the customers happy ! From here it was around the corner to Hiroi who were harvesting nisai kohaku , as we pulled up they were still busy sorting the koi out so we thought best to leave them to it and moved on to Shinoda , this farm specialises in Hi Utsuri , doitsu and gin rin and there were many to choose from . In one of the main ponds i found a stunning gin rin hi showa , it was great , but just very little white on the face , So being in a rush as we had to be at Izumiya at 11am we left and promised to come back later . One of the main reasons we had to go back was that Phily one fish ( as thats all he was buying all week so he kept telling me ) wanted to buy the 60cm Showa we viewed the day before ., and Steve " im finished buying fish " Watson wanted the aigoromo and possibly the Jimbei bloodline sanke as well . On arrival i was shocked when the breeder said , oh its you , your early , i looked at my watch and said to the agent only ten minutes , apperantly its not fasionable to be early here .............lol We told the breeder the three fish and he didnt even ask which ones and just went straight to the pond and bowled them up .Phils showa looked massive compared to the others , the male aigoromo was awsome , and i was pleased that someone had the sence to buy it even though for a male as it was alot of money by uk standards . The sanke was just as good , some might say the sumi is to heavy , but its Jimbei and thats what you get , the sumi is also very very good quality , very intereasted to see how this fish develops .Hand shakes and photos all round and it was off to Oya . Oya koi farm who are also known as Kataoka breed some very high class koi , go sanke , metalics and asagi . We had a good look round and there were some very good koi on display , but after the shiro utsuri it would take us a while to spark up again so we left and went to Otsuka just around the corner . Otsuka has some fantastic koi and some very unusual varietys , his asagi are world reknown and command high prices , and he is breeding many rare varietys , ki utrsuri , kage shiro utsuri and kage showa just amoung a few . With many koi for sale i passed to day as i really like his asagi but felt that i had enough of them already . As usual a quick egg sandwich and off to Kaneco , i really like this farm , i was really looking for kujaku ,but this year i couldnt find a good match for price and quality apart from the shiros , i really wanted to go in his best pond but a Japanese hobbiest was in there , and looked very busy so we decieded to return later as i saw some excellant tancho showa . Having many smaller nisai Kohaku from Torazo i really needed some big nisai or even sansai , so on the off chance we decieded we would give Mano a visit .He is a very old kohaku breeder , who also breeds shusui , kin showa and matsuba ogon . He gave us some prices which were very fair , after looking in the first two ponds where there were some very nice Kohaku , i deceied that if i was buying Kohaku i wanted much better , the breeder pointed to another pond .In this pond there were sansai kohaku , i said they were too big and he said no , nisai , and there were some very high quality nisai . I started bowling straight away as the new price although much higher was still very good indeed . As i was catching the nisai , a few of the sansai started catching my eye , in the end i had to ask how much and again the price was fair so i was given another bowl .Three kohaku sansai all female were purchased along with seven nisai kohaku .Really excieted about these folks , most really are show quality , and although alot of the nisai were male they looked stunning and very well built and would take some beating on body shape .Once again the photos are not so hot so look at the videos of the koi .Leaving Mano on a high i was very pleased that we had taken the trip in there and will be definatley returning next week when our second set of customers come out .From here we visted Torazo and Hirasawa who where not there but it was tsill nice to walk around and see the koi , Hirasawa had some massive doitsu ki matsuba that were awsome , and one matsuba that must have measured 80cm plus , he will definatley be getting a visit .That ended what really was a great day . Ooopps forgot to say somewhere in the afternoon we visited Marusaka , he had so many doitsu and metalics it made your eyes hurt ! Down stairs he had lots of sansai at a good price so Phil and Steve started making abox for then selves and i added a very nice ki kikikoryu to help them out ( it would have been rude not to ). On driving back to the girls (as they had a day off from koi to go shopping ) , i wondered what mummy watson would say about the five koi Steve had bought after he promised the shiro would be the last , as we went into the restaraunt i saw them talking and she screamed " FIVE ???? " , i had my answer and thought it was time to make myself scarce and disapeared into the toilet for a while ..................................photos are as follows, masaki gosai shiro 75cm , sansai and yonsai masaki asagi , Sansai showa /sanke/aiigoromo at Izumiya , four sansai at Marusaka , some of the Mano Kohaku . Please see the following links for the kohaku on videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAEk7S_hUI&feature=related and the sansai are here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lllLMKfmKYA&feature=related