It is with great sadness , that i have to inform you of the demise of Mos burgers in Ojiya city , always a favourite stop for lunch and although personally im not fussed about burger places ( believe it or not !!! ) this one was nice , and any burger place that sells corn soup on the menu , has to be a winner in my book ! You could always get somthing there that would keep any British hobbiest happy and it will be hard to find a suitable replacemment , i know Steve Battle will take this news very badly indeed !!!!!! Any way , back to the koi......................As most of the reguler readers of my blog will know , one of my favourite breeders is Maruhiro koi farm , this is the guy i affectionatley call the mad hatter , ( any one who has been there and has seen Alice in Wonderland will know what i mean ! ), so when our agent asked if i was happy with an appointment there 1st thing monday my repley was two fold , is the Pope a catholic ? will shares in confectinary fall 50 points when the world finds out i have lost 45kg !!! In a shorter answer , yes that will be fine !! There are many reasons i like this guy , he makes buying koi a pleasure , the fish grow , he has many varietys and i also think the prices are fair . Today he arrive a little late as he had come back straight from a harvest , as the fish were coming in he gave us prices straight from the van , i ended up with larger nisai Chagoi , Gin rin soragoi , Mukashi ogon and a nice Gin rin ochiba .All koi were around 45- 50cm and all female . Steve and Angie found a very attractive doitsu kujaku and ki utsuri from the smaller better nisai pond , so i used the excuse of filling the box up with some myself , these came from a cheaper pond and give very good value for money .All around 30-35cm , very unusual varietys , matsubakawebake , ginrin shiro utsuri , ki utsuri , benigoi , gin rin benigoi , gin rin midorigoi and gin rin matsubakawabake . Just as we were starting to leave , the breeder said i have a showa for you to see, male , but good for koi shows . Good for koi shows??? Damm these breeders know how to sell a fish lol , but seriously when bowled he was right , so male or not the koi was duly purchased and the we promised to return to buy some more to put in the box with the showa . Next stop was Yamazaki , he had some very nice Nisai , Sansai and yonsai koi , an incerdably nice guy , but this time we diddnt find anything that really jumped out at me , untill we had all got back in the van , and driving off i suddenly realised that i had been offered some yonsai 50-55cm female platinum ogon at a ridiculously low price , oh well , looks like we will be going back tomorrow !!!! A minute drive later , and we were at Miya , for those who remember , last feb i bought a box of small nisai from him ( Inbetween Mark and myself trashing his fish house !! ), one went on to win baby champion at two shows , another was to win baby champion at one show , and best size 3 at another two weeks later . Bearing in mind the owner of one of those koi was with us , it was to our great disapointment that he has had some of his mud ponds washed away in a cyclone during the summer and had lost 200 nisai . Some stunning koi in the main pond , including one outragious kujaku , and another kujaku that was doitsu in the 70-80cm range proved to be too much for us so we left hoping to go back when he had reharvested again . As we were around the corner we visited Miyatora , again some very nice koi , but noting that was to really get us going except one sansai that our party was thinking about . Lunch was to be at the noodle bar , so on the way we went into Nagashima , as some of you will rememeber that his showa are a prticuler favourite of mine . This time i was a little disapointed at the quality of nisai that were available , but the sansai and yonsai were very very good , in fact one sansai exceeding 70cm really caught my eye , but knowing that the price would have more numbers than a Japanese mobile i couldnt bring myself to ask the price , Nagashima asked if we could return when he harvested another pond of nisai Showa later in the week , so hopefully we will get some nisai then .Pictures below are in following order , first 4 are the larger niasi from Maruhiro , next three are smaller nisai including the better grade doistu kujaku and ki utsuri which are already now sold . Last picture is the male showa , good grade around 40cm i think . People are mailing me and asking for details of the koi , please give me a couple of hours from when the koi appear on the blog and they will be on the website with the prices . Tonight my next job is to add the new koi and tidy up the sansai page , email I about the showa and s about the kujaku , i will then do todays pm blog .............see you then