Unfortunately the 5am morning call didn't wake me as I had already been up an hour. It gave me a chance to get the majority of my paperwork and customer queries completed before we left for a very early 6am meeting at Marusei.

We had selected various jumbo koi the previous day and were returning to negotiate the price. We also had a special customer order that we also wanted to fulfil. We decided to carry on and visit another farm to view to special kohaku, then moved on to the most famous farms including DAINICHI, HOSHIKIN, NOGAMI and MARUDO - There are some amazing Nishikigoi at all these farms but Dainichi really is jaw dropping. With many of the koi in the main pond well into 6 figure sums of money. The All Japan and Nogyosai Grand champions were included amongst the koi swimming here. We always try our utmost to fulfil all customer requests however despite the huge number of koi being harvested this never 100% happens.

Kase and Otsuka was our next stop looking for Aka Matsuba then onto Ikarashi looking for more of the new variety of armoured scaled koi - Aragoke - unfortunately no koi of sufficient quality were available.

We finished at Odakan where we have 3 very special MARUYAMA kohaku on Azukari since the spring. It is always exciting to see the results after a season in a top quality mud pond. These kohaku are particularly interesting as Maruyama won the ALL JAPAN KOI SHOW last year, so this bloodline really is special quality.