Awoke today to a slighlty cooler 16 degrees , but that wasnt going to bother us any , as today we were starting off at one of my favourite breeders Sekiguchi . Its a fair old trot from Ojiya , so we went on the motorway watching the morning mist roll down the mountains and taking in the stunning scenary . On arrival we joined up with a Dutch dealer with the intent of buying together to increase buying power . Two ponds were netted , and the Dutch contingent annouced they wernt buying and moving off . The desicion was made to hand pick my way through the more expensive pond and ended up with 12 very nice tateshita showa around 30-40cm , and one smaller but certainly not lower in class . In the other pond a discussion was taking place on buying the whole pond again , i was in and so the bounty was split between us and another whole load of tateshita purchased . We spent a while taking photos and filming videos . By a slight misunderstanding we ended up in anothr fish house after talking about some smaller tosai , i noticed a pond full of way better and bigger showa , asking of they were tategoi , he replied no , they are for sale ! So we started bowling and the skin quality was amazing ( taking away nothing from those puchased earlier ) , but the price was a little above what i wanted to pay , then after looking over them again i asked more out of chancing my luck , how much for the whole pond and was very pleasantly surprised by the answer , but it was still alot of money so i needed to think about it . I can now say that after thinking all day and evening i will now purchase the pond which will leave the breeder virtually sold out except a few we returned after picking . Happy breeder , happy koi dealer ! Realising we had been there all morning it was full steam a head back down the motorway to get to Marudo for our next appointment . We were due to select out a whole lot of nisai chagoi , and jumbogo sanke tosai . From here it was to be a very hard afternoon and things went rapidlly down hill . On arrival we struggled to find enough chagois in the pond which were ordered by one of our trade customers , but managed to find one box that met the requirements , little disapointed as i needed three times as much ! So then onto the jumbo tosai tateshita select , again this diddnt go to well , they were very good quality , but i struggled with the landed price so had to decline on some very nice koi . Feeling a little in i need dome fish mode , it was off to Marusei as you cant fail to buy there at ANY time ! Well that is unless the breeder has put pp in the pond so you cant see a thing , now realising that i was way over due for a bad day in Japan , it dawned on me that it had finally arrived in style . Onto Iwashita who had some stunning gin rin kin showa , but not enough varietys to make a box .Tthen into Tanaka Maruju whose only nisai were tategoi level and with prices too match it really looked like no further koi were going to be bought today . We then discussed the point of selecting tosai again and were taken to a differant pond that looked slighly higher quality than before , but told we were buying at the same price . This time the mix was a little differant , go sanke and koromo , so we will return tomorrow to select these ! Up untill then i was also very worried about Sunday as no appointments could be made as a breeder was getting married . So what with the lack of koi in the afternoon , and lack of appoinments the day after i was getting very concerned , as we loaded up the car the phone started ringing like mad .First Marusei promising that the water will be cleared for a 9am appointment the next day , them Maruhiro for hand selecting tosai at two differant ponds , with Maruju high class hand pick of tosai at lunch time , and a whole pond of better quality showa at Sekiguchi to photograph , things were now picking up quite nicely , to add to that by dinner time another three breeders had phoned back to say they were available tomorrow as well , so looks like a very busy day !

First 26 pics are all Sekiguchi tateshita , then nisai chagoi , soragoi etc etc