Due to the late harvest last year , we still havnt seen all the koi we have left in Japan last year . So today we started with a journey up the motorway to Sekiguchi koi Farm where we had yonsai showa that we needed to see , These guys specialise in showa , and thier quality is superb , but as most of you are aware that comes at a price ! So i wasnt really getting excieted about buying much today as i usually only buy one koi there in the harvest . When we arrived we went into the small koi house where you can normally buy chisai nisai ( small two year olds ) The brothers turned the air off and dismissed the pond and said mainly males , i smiled and said it wasnt a problem , especially when there was pearl gin rin and some nice kindai showa .You have to feel sorry for the breeders after all we are always in there banging on about female this , female that , customers in the Uk want females , untill last year when i bought an ouragiously expensive male showa from this farm and sold it staright away ! So lesson learnt i started bowling up koi and soon had a nice collection of kindai showa and a gin rin matsukawabake , shiro utsuri , pearl gin rin soragoi and a pearl gin rin bekko . These koi were all around 30-50cm , and two kindai showa we found he thought might be female , i then found four tanchos around 18-20cm including a pearl one and got a price for the lot , once again i was pleasantly surprised so bought everything i had bowled . Moving into the nisai house we had a showa bowled up that we had left last year , now 70cm im hoping the customer is very happy ! Iasked if they had any nisai left and they did , but when the air was turned off the whole pond looked very expensive , into the thousands of pounds range . Bowled up a female kindai showa , and the price was ok , but it really diddnt do much for me as i had seen better in the pond .I asked for another to be bowled ,and this was way better but told male , so i thought this is gonna be expensive at the level , but to be honest i was very surprised , not cheap but very fair for this quality , Thinking i was on a roll i asked for two more that were also male to be bowled up , the guys seemed surprised i was prepared to buy males , i just shrugged and said good quality and good price , Then the other two koi came in the bowl and i was blown away , they diddnt look male at all , i said if they are the same price ill take all three , next thing i know the breeders are shaking my hand and thanking me , there English has improved and i got the deal i wanted ! Somtimes you want to haggle , its a natural thing , but this time i knew the price was very fair and diddnt argue with the price of all three together . We were soon on our way to Satoshi , we have bought a lot of koi from the young breeder and have a great relationship with him , but the last couple of visits havnt produced the right koi , when you like a breeder and his koi its always dissapointing when you leave empty handed and you always worry what the breeder my be thinking , but we will return in April to see what the tateshita selecion will bring .Sensing my dissapointment the agent suggested a quick egg sandwhich and a visit to Marudo and Maruesei to cheer me up , he knows me so well ..........................Nisai and chisai nisai pictures from Sekiguchi , first two believed to be female