After a very favourable flight landed us in to Narita airport 30 minutes early , i found myself on an earlier bullet train than normal , getting us into Nagyoka before one o clock . This gave me virtually a full afternoon to start selecting koi instead of the hour or two i get normally . We always start at Maruhiro in the afternoon , but this time we took a detour to a well known go sanke breeder where we were shown some nice tateshitatosai go sanke around 30-40cm , an appointment was made to select through these tomorrow so looking good on the better grade koi already ! From here we went to Kazuto , we havnt bought koi from here for many a year , but was surpised to see that he had some very resonably priced jumbo tosai , so we may be returning there on Monday . Then it was on to Mr dependable Hinori San of Maruhiro koi farm . Always greeted with a lot of banter that i could never under stand as he is one person in the world who talks faster then me !!!! After coffee , biscuits and more joking around , we netted two ponds and some quite nice nisai were bowled up and duly bought . After a while i started looking around wanting to buy koi just as like this guy so much .Once again he asked what i wanted and again i replied with a shrug of the shoulder .This seems to give this particuler breeder the thumbs up to run around grabbing koi from any pond to make a sale , and the strange thing is that it normlly works very well ! He started with some better nisai and two larger koi, then he started bowling up sansai , i tried to protest as i really diddnt want too many bigger koi , but you cant stop this guy when he has his mind set to somthing . Within minutes he had some single colour sansai around 45-52cm in a big bowl , i felt awkward as it wasnt what i really wanted , but when he gave the price i thought , surely we can find some room for these in the quarantine somewhere , so some nice benigoi , midorigoi , aka matsuba and gin rin ones are heading back to the UK in a week or two . We then discussed the possibilty of buying some higher grade koi , once again off he went , a very nice sansai shiro , stunning gin rin chagoi where bowled and purchased both around 50-55cm . Then he was off again with a net bounding round the farm with net and sock in hand , once again he bowled 2 shiros , this time nisai and a little more expensive along with a VERY nice aka matsuba and pretty kindai style showa . Then we were worred about the packing rate as these were not cheap koi , as if by magic he comes up with the soloution , ship one , two and three , and leave the forth with me in Japan ! I swear the man is a bloody genius , either that or a very clever salesman !!!! So we now have anither shiro staying in the mudponds this summer . First 16 pics are hand selected nsisai ,seven sansai , sansai chag and shiro around 50-55cm ,three very nice quality nisai , showa , shiro and aka matsuba all around 49-51cm , and all three female . Last but not least a nisai shiro thats staying out in Japan this summer , only 42cm but stunning ! Well thats not a bad start to the trip , 29 koi where we would normally would had just a cup of tea by know , including some higer grade as well . As for tomorrow , its hopefully jumbo tosai day , but if i tell all now , there will be nothing left for tomorrow .......lol , for me now its off to find a beer and try to beat the jet lag..........fat chance !!!