Monday.

It's been a long day!
This morning we made our way up to Hosokai. When we left Ojiya this morning it had started snowing and by the time we got up to Hosokai it was really getting quite heavy. However, it was good to renew acquaintance and see the fish again. We were able to check out the tosai and sort out a special order.

 We have several special requests to seek out so some time was spent bowling up and taking pictures of koi for this purpose. We then went to the main koi house to select some fish for the shop. Here are a selection of the Hosoaki koi. They are all nisai (2 years). The smaller ones are about 35cm and most are around 43-48cm.

 After spending the whole morning with Hosokai it was time for lunch. A good bowl of ramen soup keeps the tank well filled and we were ready for a journey out to Koda. He has a nicely run set up with some good fish. We had tried the Koda koi for the first time last year and so were ready to buy some nisai this year. Here are 2 bowls of nisai, mostly around 35cm.

Another new farm for me was next - Murata Koi Farm. He has very high quality kohaku and has been very successful in recent years at the koi shows. Again we were looking for special orders - this one is a cracking 2yr old kohaku and already about 60cm!

It's amazing how quickly the day passes when you're going from farm to farm, but we had time for one more - Tanaka Sutoshi. I was taken with his Asagi & Beni Kumonryu in particular. Here are some we bought at Tanaka.

To finish the day off (apart from doing all the paper work, facebook and this blog) we went out for dinner with Hosokai.