Today we sarted off at Kaneko koi farm , well know for shiro utsuri and kujaku . We have always been allowed to hand select tosai here , and today we hit the jackpot , as many boxes as we we wanted ! I normally go for the shiro utsuri , but they looked a bit small , this year his kujaku looked very good so it was decieded to start with these . The breeder puts a littlefood in and takes a huge great net and catches hundreds , then places them on a smaller net on top of a bowl of water . At first i was strugging , and the usual jokes about the better fish always stay at the bottom of the net were flying around , but as we got to the bottom of the huge net some great little gems came to my bowl . We soon had so many a final selection was then taken and 42 very nice Kaneko kujaku for may be a show and grow . ( If any club or dealers want these then please get in touch as we can select more , we just have to give the breeder notice ) After this we selected some shiro utsuri , this was more of a struggle as they were much smaller this year , and the breeder offered as a second scoop so we soon had more than we needed . , and again 45 this time .We were about too call time for a break as i was so tired and struggling to foucs with now only five hours sleep in three days , when the breeder offered us a chance to hand pick some kohaku and sanke , rude not too !! So everything was set up and away we went , it was soon obvious that the quality wasnt as good as the other two varietys and i was going to struggle to make a box . Its great hand selecting tosai , but not a cheap process and somtimes you just have to realise that somtimes yoiu have to pass on the chance when the figures dont add up ! So i made my apologies and asked if he had some nisai kujaku , he understood and within a few minutes we had some nice examples around 40-50cm , and once again the breeder did his best to sex the koi for us .Just as i thought we where nearly done i noticed a very nice nisai female shiro utsuri and alkso a male matsukawabake , a deal was struck and off we went after a busy morning selecting ! As we were leaving we spoke to Kaneko about his gin rin Hajiro , i asked if there was any chance to buy some and the ones he showed us were very small , i asked if there were any bigger , he replied only the tategoi . So i asked the agent if there ws any chance of purchasing one he laughed and said forget it , so i pushed the issue and we were both surprised when the answer was yes , the breeder would select one from his genuine tategoi , but the orice was alot , not unaffordable so i may just buy one , Video links will be with the koi once on the website as they dont seem to durect from the blog .pics to follow along with part two ...................