After a late night at the bar with over 10 English and South African koi dealers and watching our old friend Toru getting very drunk and reminiscing old trips to Japan, and the old arguments of mine are bigger, better and cheaper than yours, it was time to get up and actually do what we were all talking about the night before! First stop of the day are our old friend Jurosky where a nice sansai female shiro utsuri and sansai aka sanke were purchased. Shiro looks a little stressed as it was in the bowl a long time, nice koi from a real friendly family so a good start to the day.

A quick drive up the road and we were in Torazo and i think the whole group were impressed with the high quality of Go sanke available. Nearly every one had a koi in a bowl, but the real high light was a smashing little nisai kohaku that one of the group had bowled, for the money it was a fantastic koi, then came the blow when a misunderstanding led us to believe the koi was male so it was sadly returned, then the agent pointed out it was female so it was re bowled, just as the customer agreed to purchase the breeder realised that it was a tategoi that had jumped from the pond next door, the price was now double and so the poor old kohaku was returned! I have put this in the blog for no other reason than to show people all sides to a trip to Japan and show how frustrating things can get, no bodys fault at all it was just one of those things. From there to Izumeer the home of jumbo koi, unfortunately the breeder was judging a koi show so we left with a customer seeing a rather nice Tancho sanke which we needed to get a price for. On to Sakazume who had a wide variety of good grade koi but nothing taking anyone's fancy it was time to move on again. Next breeder a personal favourite of mine Miyatora, again some very nice high grade tancho sanke but yonsai with a price to match. I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed as there was just not much the whole group really liked, hopefully we will return when he harvests again. With one of our customers needing a larger high grade shiro it was off to pay a little breeder we use a visit that proved to be very usefull. Some small good grade nisai were purchased and a 6 year old shiro reserved for one of our clients. (photo to follow) heres the nisai that were purchsed, sorry about the photo of some of the shiros, trust me the skin is superb and my photography very bad.