A good nights sleep and up at 4.30 but cant complain with 7 hours sleep ill settle for that . Just thinking back over the trip and have to say , i cant say it was the best trip ever as i seem to be saying that every time i go to Niigata , may we have just peaked and every trip is as good as the last / next , this one again was nothing less than fantastic . The idea of this trip was looking for some nice tosai at every budget , and may be some older koi as we have sold so much during the winter , with so many good koi at realsitic prices i lierally went a little over the top . As most of you know , we have extended our buisness to supply other koi dealers , and this is now expanding at a very good rate , so we need to buy alot of koi when we visit Japan , this time 365 indiviually selected koi , from those with a budget in mind right through to show quality . Possibly the most varied selection we have ever chosen . One of the highlights was spending nearly a whole morning and almost a whole day with Shintaro , always liked this guy and his koi , this week somthing clicked and on both visits we purchased more koi than ui have ever bought from him . Agin msny differant levels , with 55cm nisai retailing at under £500 i think we have landed some very good purchases from him this year . Also loved the two high quality nisai we purchased from him to leave in Japan . Also another visit worth note was Kazuto , havnt bought fish from here for many a year , and was very pleased with what we picked there . Thats not taking anything away from the other breeders we visited , very pleased with all we visited and all our purchases , certainly one of the best selections of hand selected tosai we have ever bought .Ill leave you with a few pics of the scenary , and onds and ends .Thanks for taking the time out to read this , and if you ever want to join us , then feel free ! Please note that some pics courtesy of Mark Gardener .