Arrived on a differant route today courtesy oF BA and Hanneda airport instead of Narita , ive wanted to try this as it gets us into Nagaoka much earlier than the planes at Narita , plan worked as i found myself in the car at 10.30 in stead of after 2am , so great start . Met by my agent and long standing friend holding a board that i can only just describe as hilerious , but certainly not for showing on a family forum !! Still laughing about it we drove off to see our friends at Maruhiro koi farm and to team up with Mark Gardner who seems to be handling more and more of our promotion work ! . On arrival the farm was very busy so we said we would return later , he came over and asked us to wait as he had some nisai in the truck especially for us , so we did and ended up with ten quite nice go sanke and others all around 35-40cm , Photos dont quite show the fish off as they should but trust me they are nice and a very good price ! After looking at some higher quality koi , we saw again how this farm really are producing the goods at all levels , including some that were a bit out of the range we were looking at .Still thinking a bout a 60cm sansai kohaku , but more about that later . After agreeing to select some higher grade koi and tosai later on in the week we decieded to visit Kawakami .Here he had some very impressive shiros , but once again tategoi and Oya goi was the reply , there was a pond of unusual blaack and whites like Matsukawabake , kumonryu and others but we decieded to pass for now , but may go back after we have seen whats about . The afternoon was then spent at Maruju koi farm as we needed to pick up the trophys and certificates from the show at the weekend . One of his budo goromo got us a gold award and best uk entry from the second time in a row ! So it made sence to see if we could try and buy some more . The breeder took us to a pond where we could select tosai and we started with a very nice box of Koromo al nearly 30cm , and then some smaller go sanke and again a few more koromos . Very pleased with this , a deal was then done on ten higher grade tanchos all tosai and the end of the day came all to soon . A very enjoyable day including dinner with Maruhiro who had just come from crashing his car in a ditch , and people ask why do i call him a crazy Japanese monkey ! Tomorrow is already planned out with visits to yamazaki , marusei and may be an oppertunity to select through some nisai tateshita kohaku at another farm ! Ten nisai from Maruhiro koi farm , all other selected tosai from Maruju including the gold award winner which will be shipped to the uk !