This was to be my last buying day in the south , so a great place to visit was Taniguchi , i have three koi here that stayed in the mudponds , so was eager to see them . We arrived and taken to his new fish house , very impressive facility , but the down side was most koi were already sold ! There were around 40 nisai for sale , and i picked out a few examples , and the ones i like were male , so they all went back . I looked around as the breeder showed me the koi in the sold pond , he said this is the best ones , then i saw my maruten kohaku , and she looked great ! In another pond we found the other kohaku , smaller much smaller so i thought , they were both bowled up , i realised the smaller one wasnt so small , he laughed and sai the maruten was 55cm approx , the other around 49 , not bad for koi bought as tosai around 32cm , so very happy , the showa is yet to make an appearance !

He then took us to his tosai house , the prices seemed ok , but at 16cm it would be 35/40 to a box , a hell of a lot of money , so i passed . We then drove back to Fukayama to pick another person from the station , it was 2 pm and i was feeling rough still  ,so  decided to jump on the bullet train to return to Okayama , where my next hotel was . That evening i had a few beers where koi dealers meet , and bumped into a party of uk koi kichi , alot of beers were drunk , and after many conversations they realised i had the next day free , they offered me to join them at breeders the nest day , it was a very nice offer , but i had a long journey back to Tokyo , but if you guys read this , thanks ! It was a genuine nice offer ! So thats it , im done , its been two weeks of madness , from the highways and byways of Niigata , to the long roads of the South . I know some of you are wondering , so where does that leave Gatwick Koi now ???  A very good question , but that will come on Sundays blog / Summery !!!!!!!!! North v South ............

Our two kohaku at Taniguchi , both female 55and 48cm approx .