As this was the last day for our new friend from Holland Fresso , we were all hoping for a good morning , so an early start took us to Kawakami where the amount of variety and usually good prices mean you can always find plenty of small nisai to suit all customers .This time we were not so sucessful , the fish were not really the size we wanted , and the price made them not so easy to sell in the UK , please dont think that this means the Japanese are expensive far from it , the price in yen has never been so good , but with the weak pound and recent shipping increases , it makes the fish landed in the uk expensive . All week we had been trying to get to masaki koi farm , but with the snow he was way out of bounds , finally the snow ploughs had got through and it was possible to visit .The nisai were not really of the quality we were looking for so we popped up to see the better koi . The sansai /yonsai were fantastic and you can see why Omosako has purchased koi for brood stock ( Masaki shiro are from Omosako bloodline so its very close for him to use ). After seeing these amazing koi i have to say that he has to be the number one breeder of Shiro utsuri in Niigata . Watching Fresso bowl an amazing shiro utsuri , i realised that it was the koi that Rod and Diane had looked at in October , this time it looked even better ! The skin was amazing and at around 60-65 cm is definatley of show quality .I had to ask twice to make sure i had heard the price right , it had dropped by a third , so it now represents an even better buy ! (Someone is about to get sent pictures as we speak ! ) Both photos are of the same fish and camera settings , where is Mark Gardener when you need him ! At least you can see that the quality is very serious indeed , if any body is intereasted in this koi please email me as it is reserved for us , the price is very very good for a koi of this quality !!!!!!!!!!! From here it was down the hill to Hirasawa by the cemnet factory , plenty of fish of every variety and grade , but again nothing that we wanted to bowl . From here we went to Dianichi to look at the koi ( and i do mean just to look at !) , and then to Hoshikins who had completely sold out of nisai , he had a nice pond of jumbo tosai but would not let us pick them out , and i didnt really fancy the breeder just sending me a box so it was onwards and forwards . With a break to visit the koi shop , booking the train for Narita tomorow night and lunch , the morning diddnt seem to be that great a day , i could easily see that this was going to be my bad day ! ( If you read the blogs before you will see i always have one ....) After lunch it was hard to get motavated after a bad morning , but things were about to get a whoile lot better , but ill tell you more after ive had a shower !!!!