Left the hotel at 5am for the start of the journey home. From today i have a new found admiration for Japanese taxi drivers , over night 30cm of snow had fallen , and there was ice under that as well ! After 20 yards i thought we wouldnt get there as the cab was sliding and bumping over differant depths of snow , and after 100 yards we came across a lorry crashing and blocking the road . Totally unphased he reversed up and got on to the back roads where they run water though holes in the road and these were certainly much clearer, staying on the back roads he got us on the highway 17 about 20 mins later and to the station with an hour to spare , would that have happened in the UK ???? Every time i leave , i feel sad knowing that it will be months till i return to the place and the people i have grown to love so much , many of the breeders asked if i was going to return to select tateshita in April instead of just ordering it , i think that may be i will !! . This week has been another fantastic week , Tom and Kevin were great company , and i hope they enjoyed it as much as i did .On Thursday night i sat down with the agent and started calling round the breeders to order more koi as we diddnt get much during the day , and some breeders we couldnt get to at all ! We have ordered 100s of tosai on top of what we mentioned in the blog , boxes of 15cm yamabuki ogons 14-16cm goromo , 14-16cm doitsu metalics and doitsu go sanke all from sakazume . From Toarazo a box of higher grade kohaku 25-30cm tosai , two boxes of kohaku , sanke and tancho , around 20cm and a box of sanke 25cm . With all the hand picked tosai during the week im sure that will make a nice selection of small koi for the shop and our new wholesale facility . I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog as much as i have writing it , if you would like to join us on a buying trip then please ring for details , dont be put off by the horror stories of the snow , as its only this trip that we face this problem .We intend to go out at least once more before this summer , so if you want to join us , or your thinking of going this auntumn for the harvest , then please ring us as there is already alot of intereast and i think places will go faster than ever this year ! If you are intereasted in buying any of our koi , from now on wards there will be no keeping fee as by the time they come out of q/tine im hoping temperatures will be warm enough to collect fish , if not it will be down to us ,look forward to seeing or speaking to you soon ...............Gary