When you have been dealing with different breeders on and off over 30 trips to Japan , you learn never to expect the expected , and always expect the unexpected ! Ok so that may not make sence , but to other dealers who have visited Niigata , or customers for that matter , you will know what I mean . You can visit your favourite breeder and turn up some great koi , then next visit nothing . Very pleased that diddnt happen to us on our first appointment today which was at Hosakai koi farm , although when I first walked into the farm I thought that was going to be the case , every pond I looked in delivered nothing in terms of quality on our last couple of visits , so getting worried and assuming the better quality fish house would be sold out at this time of year I started to feel this trip would be a disappointing to one of our favourite breeders , trying to remain positive we ventured into the other koi house .I needn’t have worried , plenty of koi of all varietys and fairly reasonable prices . First of all I bought 4 female nisai 45-55cm , shiros and showa . There were some great male koi and the prices again were very fair , a two step kohaku of show quality , showa , stunning skin quality shiro utsuri and the last described by the breeder as a goromo showa , not sure that id agree , but worth a go as the skin quality was very nice ! On making the last box up , I felt a little brave so went and looked at his best pond , two nisai around 50cm grabbed my attention , when I pointed at them I heard the words we all hate , ah Gary san totemo takai , loosely translated as very expensive . I tried not to laugh as being in his best pond I had kinda worked that out ! I got them bowled and we spoke at length about their quality , and along with four more female nisai , showa , two sankes were all purchased once again with what I thought was a very fair price , one shiro it was decieded should stay in Japan for the summer , very very pleased , a great mornings work ! We then visited the tosai house and was offered a hand selection of very nice koi around 16-20cm , the breeder then pointed out some other tosai in various other nets all around the building . These were not cheap , but once again the quality was outstanding , so it was a case half a dozen from here , hald a dozen from there etc etc , and an hour later a bowl of outstanding tosai ( shame my pics don’t do them justice ! ) A few very unusual varetys as well , including two kage shiro utsuris , one of which had the darkest sumi I had seen for a long time . From here it was off to the 7-11 to grab a well over due egg sandwich and hot coffee from a tin . On the way back to Ojiya city we visited Chogaro as he had some tateshita goshiki , I decieded to pass on them as we had already purchased quite a few from Kanno on our last two trips . It was off then to see Maruju Tamaka and have a look at some more tosai to select from , unfortuanatly we visited the nisai house and it all went wrong , we always have a chat and a laugh as Shigy has a great sense of humour , this time he was being serious and started chatting about his koi and explaining more and more ( as he does every visit ) about his koi and the great skin quality they have , before we all knew it there was half a dozen nisai 40-45cm in the bowl ,he started talking about which ones and why they would be good to leave in the mudponds , did some one say Azukari ? that was it , I was hooked line and sinker and ended up buying three . The first was a female sanke which was absolutely stunning , skin quality off the charts but with a little secondary near the tail , this was very close/on top of some underlying sumi , so hopefully of all goes well ………………….. , next a gin rin showa , this was not only gin rin but the whole koi had a metallic lustre about it and again anther destined for the mudond , this time the breeder couldn’t be sure of the sex , so readjusted the price which reflected this , so this was purchased as well , thinking id got away with just two nisai ( as this really is a tosai based trip and ive already bought way too many nisai ) Shigy started recommended another sanke to be left in Japan , a maruten female which again had great skin quality but along with a body shape to match , so again purchased to be left out in the mudponds . With three nisai purchased I had to push on to the subject of hand selecting tosai , the breeder laughed and said oops sorry , I havnt taken all the tategoi out , ill do it tomorrow ! Oh well , the nisai were a great buy and I like to see his fish come out of the mudponds , so something to look forward to in October !!! From here we started the drive down the mountain only to see that Sakai was in his fish house, as he hadnt seen us i banged on the door with my flat hand , he really did jump , more than I expected , and as I looked round I saw the reason why , he was just making a cup of coffee , and at the precise moment I banged the door he was just lighting a rather large gas grill , he must have thought his days were numbered lol ! He took it well and we joined him for coffee along with Mark Gardner , and soon the conversation was down to its usual unprintable subjects . One sensible thing that came out of the conversation was he had entered my little koi into the forthcoming international baby koi show , but more about that another day ! It was getting late so we popped into Maruhiro on the way back to talk about tosai selection , and once again the subject was delayed by the process of bowling larger nisai and sansai , showa and sanke , these were of very high quality and this time I had to take some time out to think about what he has offered me , so all koi were reserved until tomorrow when we will go back with a nights sleep behind me ( hopefully !) . As usual , pics to follow in an hour or twos time ……