As i got up this morning it started snowing , not too bad as theres only about a meter at the moment , which by Niigata standards is nothing at all . By nine am we reached Sakai and there was already 6 inches on the road , by a rough guess id say if this carried on then it could two feet within half a day , and that really would be game over for the day untill the snow ploughs came round . Well if we got stuck we were in the warm , with a cup of green tea and an even warmer welcome .Ive always like this family and im still surprised that such a big farm has lots of time for a smaller company like mine . We were shown around the whole fish house with some amazing koi , mainly nisai and sansai but stiunning quality but we were there mainly to talk about tosai and future tateshita buiness . After a chat about the whole koi world in general we realised time was marching on so we pushed Sakai into picking some nice tosai for us like he does every year , he asked us where we were going and we said to hand select at Tanaka , he asked why we hadnt asked him if we could pick , i said we diddnt think he would have the time , he replied let me think and call you . Well that made my day , if we could get a couple more boxes of go sanke hand selected tosai at the level of these two breeders it would make this a perfect week . As we were going i asked if i could take some pics of some koi that i like , he said no problem and three were bowled .The first a stunning sanke had a red eye , on a good koi this wouldnt worry me too much , but this one was completely orange through to the iris and diddnt look attractive at all , the second was even nicer , so that was photograhed along with another sansai , this time a showa , really nice koi but as usual my pics dont do it justice . Just as i was leaving Sakai asked if i was intereasted in some cheap standard koi with some clean matsuba amoung them , not wanting to be rude i said we would look , and the matsuba were lovlely , couple of go sanke in there and plenty of kujaku .I then made the biggest time old mistake of a dealer , if your not intereasted , dont ask the price! Unfortunatley i did , and they were an absolute gift and we both knew it , now id have to buy some as it would appear to be wasting his time asking the price in the first place !! Within the first 30secs of going in the pond i started laughing as these koi he called standard were way above some of the koi we were looking and buying during the week and way cheaper ! Only took me a few minutes and i had a lovely box of 6 nisai , again so cheap i diddnt want to start asking what sex they were ! As we got in the car we couldnt believe that Sakai would let us hand select in february , so the thought was firmly removed form the weeks events . Arriving at Tanaka , we were met by a smiling breeder who said that the customers hand picking before us had left two fish that i really wanted , so we wondered down to the fish house and was set up and allowed to select through the whole pond . It was a great hour spent selecting and i thoroughly enjoyed it , after i had about sixty koi and emptied the net , we started to pick though the best 40 , Tanaka was very intereasted in what customers liked , nearly as much as i was in listening to which fish of mine he would have picked , and they wernt a million miles off so that pleased me even more . These tosai were not cheap , and 40 of them come to quite a bit of money , he said will you be able to sell them ok , i laughed and said i certainly hope so .Would a certificate help you , i said it was crazy and too much work ,so he suggetsed picking the best ten and photographing , measureing and giving a certificate of authentication . After doing just that , he then said ill have to take pics of all the koi for shipping , so i now had an oppertunity to take pics of all the koi for the website. Once again pics are bad , but i took a video to give some idea of how good the quality is . With big handshakes all round , we agreed to return and pick the certifcates up on Friday. As you may have noticed from the blog we have now changed the way we work , its not practical running round Niigata trying to visit 60 breeders , better to slow down and spend more time with the breeders , consoladate the spend , and generally try to work closer with them , i think this is a prime example of the results you can get ! As we were getting in the car , the agent asked if i was happy , too right i was , those tosai are the dogs ................. ( not finshing the sentance here for obvious reasons ) , as i finished saying the sentance Tanaka had heard what i said and he staretd laughing so much i thought he was going to cry , i apologised and he said no problem and i then had to explain exactley what this bit of slang means , he thought it was great and promised to use it at every oppertunity , as we drove off i couldnt help grinning and thought of the next English party that visit the farm , bowl a koi and have it described as the dogs do dahs ............................! Photos to follow , and then the afternoons blog after ive been to 7-11 for another egg sarnie or curried rice . Pics in order , two sansai at Sakai , six nisai all between 40-50cm , 41 hand selected high grade tosai from Tanaka Maruju , 18cm -23cm , The ones on individual pics are measured and will come with a certificate