A customer has asked us for a 80-90cm chagoi , So first port of call had to be Marudo , he has some fantastic koi that will normally hit a metre and do it very quickly ! Ive always bought my better chagoi or karashigoi here based on the results myself and customers have had with his fish . We gave him the budget and the fish we were being shown would not have been to the customers tase at all . There where better ones , and way better ones , but a budget is a budget so i took a few pics and promised to pass them on to the customer From here it was time to visit Marusei koi farm , famous for just about everything we hadnt really done a lot of buiness there over the years , but hearing very good things from my dutch colleges we went there the other day and got some nice koi and even some higher quality for a very good price , hoping that this would pave the way for bigger and better things later in the week , it certainly did . One thing Marusei is famous for is his hi utsuri , this koi grow big , are a very dark colour and dont seem to get shimmies ike so many others. Within a few minutes i had bowled a couple and they were close , but no cigar , then i saw another two i liked , the first larger sansai was near on 60cm and the slighly smaller one was 55plus ,When the first one went in the bowl i was impressed , show quality and simply great , price seemed fair as he is not normally cheap on these koi , but when the second one went in the bowl and he said buy both and gave me the price i couldnt shake his hand fast enough ! Although very impressed with the qualty and price of my two purchases , i realised that many people still couldnt or wouldnt pay the price of these two koi , the answer was staring me in the face in the next door pond , 35-40cm nisai hi utsuri.Spent the next half hour catching some up again very pleased with them , and also smuggled in a very nice showa that we did have a good old fasioned haggle on . The breeder was talking to our agent and i gathered from my limited Japanese that he was pleased we were doing buisness again,while chatting he asked where we had been today and we told him about the order for the chagoi , within a flash he was asking us to follow his van . Minutes later we were through the utogi tunnel at thier old facility ,hadnt been in here for many a year and memories of my early trips spent with Dave Rice and Toru came flooding back , happy days ! He bowled an 82cm chagoi that was just what we where looking for , and once again as so many times this week the price was way better than i thought , the agent said good for your customer budget , take picture and email him , the breeder said that was ok , i did a quick mental arithmatic and i said no , we will buy her anyway So i am now the proud owner of a chagoi that will , in the breeders own words go through one metre in three years if looked after all right .That is now the biggest fish i have bought today so im over the mooneven if the customer doesnt want it .Then as we where gonna call it a day the agent recieved a call asking if we wanted some small kumonryu , we arrived very shortly after and picked a few doezen . All in all a very good day , from the small to the ridiculous . Pictures as follows ........Two sansia hi utsuri , nine nisai hi utsuri and one showa , 82 cm chagoi.