After having five hours sleep in the last two/ thjree days , i ventured into the car in the hope that if i could drink a coffee every hour i might last the day ! As it happened , the day was so eventful i neednt had worried at all . First stop was Yamazaki koi farm , as usual we concentrate on maily non go sanke here , and within minutes we had three ponds with lots of koi in the them that we needed . The breeder was very busy getting a shipment together for the afternoon and i could see that we were going to get in the way .The breeder seemed relieved that we understod , but diddnt make me feel any better walking away from koi i needed .There were sanke , platinum ogon , hariwake , gin matsuba , kin matsuba to name but a few ! The breeder asked us to come back first thing tomorrow and reassured us that he wasnt serving any one else today , so we can relax as all the fish will be there in the morning ! So from here we drove round the corner to Marusie koi farm . The scale of the operation here is massive , breeding nearly every variety known to man ! For those who have been here you will know the problem , sometimes there are so many koi that you cant see them again , this time however the breeder had a nisai pond nettet to do a shipment , so while they were all seine netted i took full avantage and got myself some very resonable nisai . First box chagoi , ogon and metalics , then a second box of kujaku , very clean and again very resonablly priced . Last box in here was some larger koi 45-50cm and sansai ,one asagi and four kujaku , with a looming argument developing over a certain persons alledged expensive ear phones , for expensive video camere , it was decieded that enough was enough and time to retire for some curried rice at the local noodle bar ! After lunch we ventured back into Ojiya city , where we then visited Hasegawa , very famous for his kohaku and sanke .We bowled a few koi , and there were some very nice Kohaku , and sanke that i am thinking about . Being in the middle of Ojiya there are a few breeders that have fish houses near the city we could visit . After a brief discusion on who , what and why , a quick call to Ikarashi Kazuto found us driving to his tosai house with the possibilty of selecting through his jumbo tosai . Ive always had a great resepect for Kazuto but always found his koi very expensive , and reasuringky so ! Tthis time was no differant , the koi were amazing , as ever we were drawn to his tategoi pond which were AWESOME ! , dont think any lesser description would hve done . Discusions were then made about the jumbo tosai and one smaller tosai that were available , we then set about netting the pond with the intention of buying 15 peices and then scurying back to the hotel and moan ive no money left , i certainly got the latter right . Kazuto set about lifting them out of the water and i was very much taken back by the quality of the fish before me . Before too long the one metre bowl had far too many koi in it and we were asked to make a selection of some of the koi before cacthing any more up . Mark Gardner joined me as we went through and it took us no more than a couple of minutes to come up with fifteen stunning kohaku . I waw wondering what id left in the bowl and what we hadnt even seen in the net . Mark was like me really enjoying the job in hand and looked at me and a comment along the lines were made of surley not just one box ! Without a though of the maths involved we selected another box , and then another , then Kazuto suggetsed finsihing the net and we carried on until we had bought 60 of some of the nicest tosai i have ever selected . I seriously cant remember a time where there was simply not a struggle to find the right koi and even the breeder was pointing out some that i had missed , so with him ,my self and Mark we managed to select some great koi and have a great and enjoyable day . After photos and videos we decided to call it a day with us all being very tired and knowing that these koi would be a hard act to follow coffee and a bit of time to get my head down was badly needed .It then dawned on us that we had offered to help with the shipment before going back to the hotel . I hadnt seen the operation for a few years and it just reminded me how much work goes into gettting the koi we love so much around the world ! Back in the hotel i had a massive reality attack , it dawned on me that im not a young man anymore , im nearly fifty , and cant go half way round the world on about 5 hours sleep over three days ! This fact was hammered home to me as i fought with sleep while attempting to do this blog and finally falling straight off the chair onto the floor of my room ! Couple of hours sleep later ive just managed to finsh the blog and will start the rest of the website work . A fantastic day , possibly the most enjoyable for a long time , and even better knowing that tomorrow we start on a positive that we have koi we know we can select , and then a visit to another high quaoity breeder Sakai Yamamatsu !