Sometimes this trip in April/May can be very frustrating , sometimes its hard to still find quality as most stocks have been heavily picked through , sometimes a pond that may have been overwintered gets harvested and sometimes you get a phone call saying a breeder has just selected his final tategoi and the tateshita is available to purchase . Sometimes it can be very frustrating , like yesterday afternoon , visiting breeders that you like one after the other , and finding nothing .After our first visit of the day at Yamazaki , I started to feel that today was going to go the same way .We looked through all that he had available , there was nothing that I really needed . So a discussion then took place on where to go , Oofuchi was mentioned , but at this time of year he really has lower quality nisai , and nice tosai . As we were struggling a little for appointments , as a lot of the breeders were getting ready for the forthcoming show this weekend , we decided to go and visit Oofuchi and see what the tosai that were left were like . On arrival we first went to the nisai house as the breeders were there with someone else . This turned out to be a great piece of luck , there were loads of nisai there , and of quite good quality to some excellent ones . I started netting straight away , and got some very nice sanke , tanchos , kumonryu , kujaku and a few others . I seemed to be getting box after box , and it wasn’t until the paper work was done , I realised I had caught and bought 42 nisai , from 30cm to 45cm . This was a real lucky break , as this week I was happy with the quality I had bought , just worried about the quantity , so joking and laughing with spirits raised much higher , it wasn’t until about 20 mins later someone said , “ errrr we diddnt look at the tosai “ , I really did want to see them , but wasn’t complaining as we had really got some nice koi at a great price ! From here it was 7-11 for lunch , loads of calls trying to find breeders that wernt setting up the show . Kase seemed to be the only one in , so off we went . Kase has started to breed shiros again for the last few years and they are very nice , on arrival he still had a few nisai left , so 10 were selected and then we looked at the sansai and nisai showa . There were some very nice showa , he breeds from Sekiguchi / Dianichi parents , so I bowled up a female yonsai , sansai and some nisai including a tancho showa , Kase asked if we liked males , of course I replied looking at the bowl of females wondering how we could get the price down a little , so before long a second bowl of showa was filled up and five were selected and a price was given and rapidly accepted for all the koi . After a great day we took a few minutes out for pics of the last blossom and decided to drive up to mushigame for some scenary shots and have an early day . We crossed through Ojiya and started up through the mountains and passed Maruhiro , who was sitting outside drinking coffee , he must have seen us as immdediatly the phone started ringing , coffee ??? Oh go on then .We were soon joined by a few people who decided that his farm is also a great coffee shop , including a couple of Australian koi keepers who were touring around , must have been very frustrating for them , as we see koi we cant afford , they see koi they cant buy full stop , due to Australian laws forbidding the import of koi . As much as I felt bad for them , time is money so I bowled up some koi , and soon had a great sansai showa 66cm , and 48 cm sanke , both to be returned to the mudponds this summer . As we started looking before we knew it Hinori san got netting koi and showed us a 64cm sansai gin rin sanke , and a 60cm sansai kohaku , these were purchased and time to call it a day . Pics to follow as usual within a couple of hours