Plans had been made earlier during the week to meet up with Toshiaki from Sakai koi farm to allow us to hand select through some of his tosai ponds .Im always concerned about this as theres always a reason why it cant go head , just fed them , still tategoi in there , etc etc , as we walked from pond to pond , it looked like it was going to be the tatego reason , understandably they havnt sorted out the tategoi as its way too early in the year . So we were given some prices during the week , and now that seemed to have doubled , still tategoi in the pond was the explanation given . There was still some that hadnt been selected yet , so im now of the opinion everything i select will be taken off me and placed back in the pond , he said no , at that price you can take what you like .I diodnt need a second invitation , the koi were around 18-23 cm and very high quality ! The pond was netted and we soon had the bowls and mets set up and we were away . As they were of such good quality , only 20 to a box , but i found two i couldnt leave behind so we ended up with 22 koi , of which Sakai pointed out 4 that he considered tategoi ! Great experiance and really enjoyed myself , in fact it took me back to talking to Gary Pritchard a BKKS judge last year when he asked me if being a dealer killed the hobby for me , It would have taken a sledge hammer to take the smile off this boys face today , me with what i consider to be one of the most important breeders in Niigata , chatting laughing and selecting fish of outragious quality , dont think i could enjoy the hobby any more if i wanted to ! Feeling a bit cheeky i asked if any more ponds could be netted , so it was off to another fish house for a repeat performance .This time the price was a fraction of the price of the pond before , and when i looked in the pond i thought i could see why , but when the fish were netted and we started selecting there were some very nice koi amoung them . Just over 30 selected including some tancho sanke , once again very happy ! Pictures are of some of the high class tosai we selected today .Followed by some of them in a bowl with the breeder pointing to what he thinks is tategoi . Some of the smaller tosai hand selected today . Sorry just fell asleep , need some shut eye so going to bed , ill carry on later.