By now , most of you will know that we have started a sister comoany to Gatwick koi called Nishikigoi sales .This is to supply to the trade hand selected koi , not normally readily  availablein whole sale facilitys  such as tateshita , hand selected and larger koi to selct through .. To enable us to do that we have had to change the way we buy our own koi here in Niigata , that is to say the days of rushing round buying here there and everywhere have now changed to using a reguler group of breeders where we can get better deals as we are buying so many more koi in one place , makes logistical , financial and relationship building sence ! This doesnt mean how ever we wont visit other breeders when taking customers round , it just means when i need to buy better quality koi , i dont have to pay top end as we are not just buying one or two koi there . This is why we keep revisiting certain breeders and why so many are letting us hand pick tosai for ALL grades. Its also is noticable how things have changed for us when visiting breeders .Great example of this was at our first appoinment at Yamazaki , usually buy nice quality koi there , as we did today , but also now shown koi that always seemed to be in sold out ponds ! Today was no exception , asked for some aiigoromo /koromo , and he took us straight to a sold pond and he caught up around 14 koi , tancho , goshiki tancho ,aigoromo and many others .Little bit dear to start off with , but when i annouced intention to buy all that changed everything , No haggling required as seems the normal nowadays , a way better price was given and all of them purchased , Please note many many things are said about negotiations , i now find i am given a good price , if i am happy with that price then there atre no need for further discusions ,  this proved the case as he went in the net nd pulled out another good example and was placed into the deal foc  , great really as i had already agreed to buy them all ! We then purchased 10 more from the reguler ponds and really excelled myself at my rubbish photography ! From here it was off to Sakai Yamamasu koi farm , i had a set plan of what i needed from one of our favourite breeders , but that was soon to be thrown out of the window ! On arrival we had the usuall coffee and chat , everytime we visit this guy we are made so welcome and its hunbling remembering that this is one of he most prestigious farms in Japan , Even more so when we asked how busy he was and how much time he had , the reply was astounding , yes , but have all day for Gary San , just what i wanted to hear . First of all our sansai showa was bowled ,  measured and the certificate made , She was an impressive 61cm and looked as good as ever ! We then saw some astounding nisai , we asked if they were for sale and he replied going back to the mudpond , i felt it was time to push the issue , and a price was given , not cheap but not outragious so we started to bowl a few , before we knew it we had been left with Ken the helper and had 11 in a bowl , Sakaireturned and  seemed a bit anxious and said he wanted some to go back to the mudpond please , so i said no problem and returned wto back to the pond , He thought this was funny and laughed  , but soon stopped when i said ok , ill buy them all ! I could see he wasnt exceited about the prospect , which did surpise me a little , so i guess he really diddnt want to sell them all , but he shrugged his shoulders and said ok little discount and that was it , 8 very nice sanke and shiro utsuri , all female except one that he wasnt sure on , but at that level with what i thought to be a great deal i wasnt going to ask to swap one ! Relation ship building ! Ffrom her we moved onto the tosai house down the road , and he netted a pond and said tategoi , i laughed and said always tategoi , he didnt laugh this time , just looked t me and nodded . When they were netted a price was given and it was all i could do to take a sharp intake of breath , realising that a box of these could seriously drian a day or twos budget i asked how many in a box , getting impatient i asked the agent again , he replied , its not a case of how many we can get in a box , its a case of how many he wa going to let me have ! Six was the reply , as was the same when we netted another pond , then we were allowed to choose another to leave in Japan for a year . Picking tosai at this level is very hard , make a mistake and its an expensive one , and looking through these i could see that the tategoi dont always look like you think they would , made my choice after some time and then looked for one  to leave , everthing i always tell my clients went straight out of the window and i selected one on pattern alone basis ! Why you ask , simple , cos i liked it !! With this done we moved onto another fish house where we netted up another pond and a deal was done for 40 jumbo tosai , unfortunatley when they come to the net they wernt really what we were looking for so we called time and packed up nad left . Somtimes its very hard , i really wanted to buy lots of jumbo tosai from this breeder , but it diddnt work out that way and i ended up with nigh on tategoi level nisai , and a hand full of extremely expensive tosai ,nothing like what i had wanted , but very  happy nether the less ! Driving around the mountains we had 30 mins to kill, so it was obviously time to for coffee with our friend Hinori san . On arrival the coffee was waiting and the usual merriment started , after coffee he took as to another pond with what looked like very nice tosai amoung them , he netted them and said i could select , i lookd at the agent and just laughed and sat down and started selecting , who was i too argue , two more nice boxes of hand selected tosai with a few larger ones up to 30 cm in as well ! It was starting to get dark so we retired to our 20th coffe of the day ( it then dawned on me , is this why i cant sleep ???? ) Hinori seemed a bit sad that tomorrow was my last day , so he smiled and bolted up right and said stay here all day , i said we were looking at some higher quality koi at another farm , talked about what i was looking for and he said i have some ,i said no way as i thought i had seen everything here , he then rushed off to the fish house and showed us a very high quality , kohaku , tancho sake , tancho showa , gin rin kohaku and said if you come back tomorrow you can have these at this price , had i just been bribed , or is he a very good saleman , oh well , we will just have to wait to see what tomorrow will bring ! Also forgot to add that we have a client who is buying all males ,but high grade ones , whilst we were at Sakai he showed us this sanke around 55cm , unbelievable quality ,nine nisai around 50-55cm all femle except one he wasnt 100 percent  , 16 nisai fom Yamazaki higher quality 12 tatgoi tosai from Sakai, another one staying in Japan , three pics of Maruhiro koi selected tonight.