After a two hour sleep and a walk down the 7-11 for beef curry and rice i feel abit more human . Lack of sleep is an awfull thing and can really catch up with you as i found today . So now a little relaxed now we can get on with this afternoons action .After egg and coffee ( seems to be my permament lunch now ) we headed up the mountains to see Shinoda . People always say to me why dont you go in March with all the other dealers , when we got to Shinoda i got a stark reminder , alot of breeders stocks are already getting low , and Shinoda diddnt have much left , as we asked the prices i was actually shocked about how cheap the koi were here , although the quality was down since my last visit i still thought the koi were extremely good value for money and we soon had had a resonable collection of gin rin showa and doitsu showa , all nisai and varying in size 40-50cm .Once again the breeder did his best to sex the koi for us , this breeder really is a nice guy and im pleased we are doing alot of buisness with him , although this is buisness , somtimes relatoionships can make or break a deal , i was gobsmacked when taken to a tank and offered the chance to hand select tosai ! Never ever known this and was very pleased but the price was very high so im giving it some thought at the end of the week to see how im going for money ! We then had a phone call from Steve Gibbo who is one of the driving forces behind putting the national show on this year , Steve joined us for a quick coffee and ran some ideas he had for the show past us , this guy is really working hard to make the national what it used to be , i hope he gets all the support he can !!! Steve then came with us to another breeder , im not going to mention this breeder as he had some very nice koi that i have an intereasting option on , also a 55cm at least female doitsu midorigoi , clean as you like and veryu very nice , if any one is looking for a good example then feel free to contact me , still thinking about it as i write this and may go back and buy her anyway . Pictures are the doitsu and gin rin showa at Shinoda , if any dealers are intereasted in some this quality or better then get in touch as we have been offered a great deal of which i am also thinking about .