May be a strange title , but after the day ive had i cant even begain to put into words how one of the best days for me in Japan just went , it was nothing less than incredable . Like all stories we start at the begining , first appointment was at Nogami .This breeder has a fantatsic reputation and i really need to spend more time with farms like this .When we arrived there wasnt alot of koi available so it was a little dissapointing as we expected to see way more and my hope of buying a Nogami kohaku were slipping fast , one was bowled which you will see below and although the skin was very impressive , i just diddnt feel right for me so we passed and moved on to Izumiya .Here Heather was looking for a sanke , and as this breeder uses Jimbie bloodline we were hoping to see somthing special . After looking through all the sansai , nothing was found that fitted what she was looking for .Plan B , give the breeder a budget , we did this and he took us to a yonsai pond and pulled out what we coinsidered to be the best fish in there by far ! Stunning skin and gloss shiny sumi , it was the best we had seen for a while , but i could see that it still wasnt what Heather was looking for . We thanked him and left and went on our way to Kase . Although today was mainly about finding a sanke for heather , she admitted that she diddnt think she would find one this week so resigned her self to a showa . Now although Kase is known for metalelics and doitsu , he also has some very nice showa , this has been developed using dianichi and sekiguchi bloodline , i have bought a lot from him over the years and was expecting to find some good quality koi here . Once again the dissapointment bug was with us , i really like this farm , he is such a nice guy and we always buy from him , but this time the there just wasnt the quality we were looking amoung the showa . His doitsu and metalics were out of this world , but this time we wernt looking fior these so once again it was on our travels . Rushing back to Mushigame to get my book i had left at a farm yesterday , we noticed that he had harvested again so we will go back there later, but for now we had an appointment with Kanno , a new breeder to us so i was keen to get there as i really needed some sankes , and he is also known for goshiki . At Kanno we were taken to a pond and offered some nice nisai at a very good price and picked five females , two goshiki , two sanke and one tancho showa .His bloodline is very intereasting , momotaro and sff , so it should be intereasting to see how these will grow ! Lunch time was upon us , and so it was off to 7-11 again with a happy Gary but slighly sad customer who had now resigned herself to buying no sanke . After scoffing the usual aray of egg sandwhich and crab sticks we flew round to Maruhiro and give him the bad news , we couldnt attend the harvest tomorrow that all my koi are in as we had to find a sanke for Heather , you could see he wasnt happy as he had kind of planned his day round us , i felt really bad as this is one guy who we really have struck up a bond with , but customers come first as we were running out of time . To try and make amends i had bought some nisai over the weekend and hadnt added to them to make a box to ship , so hoping this might cheer him up i dived in a pond as it looked like there was plenty of new koi , within a minute we both had a net and everyone was all smiles . Very quickly we had a nice bowl of small nisai around 35cm, the day was really turning around . From here it was off to Shintaro , Mark Gardener was waiting for us when we got there and was soon joined by the breeder , Saito san had offered us some nice quality nisai at a very resonable price , now these are certainly not high class koi , but very attractive koi at an affordable price for people to see how they develop and grow . We soon had way more than we needed and sorted out two sanke and a kohaku , as we were in a rush and had an appointment i looked at three sanke Mark had put in a bowl , i passed on them and then did nothing but think about them for the rest of the day , oh well , snooze you lose as i so often say to my customer ! As we passed by Sakai the agent said dont forget you have a koi reserved there , and they are there now do you want to go and sort it out . We all agreed but diddnt really want to as Sakai wasnt going to harvest untill friday there wouldnt be much more than our last visit .How wrong we were ! The little truck was there brimming with koi from a new harvest , they had changed shcedule , result ! They asked us to join them and we watched the high grade nisai come out into bowls and be sorted .Sakai and his father were both there and greeted us very warmly , the father stopped working to come and talk to us and i felt like an old friend revisiting .I know many breeders make us welcome , but this farm is one of the busiest and they always take time out to make us feel welcome and we are by no means any where near to being a top customer of thiers ! Sakai asked us if Hreather and found a Sanke , she shook her head and before we knew it she had been told to look at the bowls and the father was also joining in placing new koi in front of her , for her to view . Once again we just asked for koi around a certain price mark and were shown many stunning sankes , the one i was looking at during the week was also placed in the bowl and a great amount of discusion then took place with what seemed all the workers and everyone in the farm joined in . Again this was wierd to me , i did a rough calculation of fish in bowls and on the back of the truck , and they had stopped again to help Heather , when they really should have asked us to wait while they finsih or for us to return a little later , i really did feel a little humble but was enjoying the time so much this soon passed ! After much discusion and moving koi we had three very high end sankes in a bowl , including mine , heather then asked for a showa to be added which we saw unloaded .It couldnt be found , we were all sure that it went into a side pond , after everyone looking for it i spotted it in his main nisai pond .I shook my head and sakai said ok ok and it was bowled before you could say i cant afford that . With four now very expensive koi in a bowl , Heather announced that she was intereasted in both , i said i coukdnt decide between the sanke i had reserved , and a new one that had "found "its way into a bowl . Before i knew it i had asked for a little discount and we would buy all four ......hold on , whats that all about , i had toyed with the idea of leaving one sanke at a level i had never bought nisai before , suddeny im trying to buy two , have i got caught up with the moment , is the breeder a better sales person than i thought , or it is just time to raise the bar a little ??? So more discussion , cries of Gary san quality up up , and hoots of laughter , then the serious face of Sakai , buy all four , heres the offer , but leave them all here , they have a very good future and will only improve , so thats it , the most two expensive nisai i ever bought and will only bee seen briefly for the next few years , Heather will leave hers as well and was smiling like a cheshire cat , and with that we had another surpise .Sakai said he would take us out for dinner tonight when we last visited during the week , he asked if it was still ok , i said we would have to think about it , yeah , for about a milli second !!!! The master class continues . The only thing that bugged me was spending all this money and having nothing to show in the shop for it , so he took us to another pond and showed us some nice quality makes .I really diddnt want to buy any males as i had avoided it on most of the single koi , but when he told me the price once again it was a case of it would be rude not to . So three sankes later and a gin rin tancho we called it a day and moved on to our last stop knowing that we would be having a great night later on . Over the last few days i have had nothing but emails about a certain sansai showa at shinoda , its so high grade its unbelievable , but with the peck slighly clipped the breeder finally reduced the price the day before last and i was soooo tempted but spending is starting to get out of control i thought best not to . After 5 more emails today i went back to him and explained that im sure i coukd sell it if the price was a little less , he agreed and a deal was struck , two more nisai selected to tavel in the box and we were done and dusted on what must have been one of the most enjoyable days ive ever spent in Niigata .The evening was pefection itself , just Gary , Heather , Chris , myself and Sakai . So much talk about koi , the mans hopes and dreams , secrets that we cant mention to any one , stuff about his breeding pairs , it wa really was a fantastic night , one full of education , laughs and great food . I get the the impresion that we were told alot of things that sakai wouldnt normally tell people , and i fely very honoured that the man would take us into his personal world , and im afraid thats where it will stay ! Pictures in order Nogami kohaku ( not purchased ) , five Kanno nisai all female 45-50cm , three bowls of maruhiro nisai 35cm approx , Guess who ??? Next three Shintaro nisai 45-55 all female , showa and three sankes from sakai going back to the mudpond all around 55cm , four male nisai 45-55cm from sakai , two nisai gin rin showa and two pics of the sansai to show clip of peck , now purchased by us