We arrived in the mega metropolis city of Tokyo Japan, having put our watches forward 9 hours after an 11-hour flight.

This year we heard that there might be a shortage of small koi available, so we made the decision to go out to Japan in February instead of April.

The oldest known fish (and indeed one of the longest living vertebrate ever recorded) was a beautiful scarlet coloured female Koi called ‘Hanako’ (pronunced hah-nah-koh; translated as ‘Flower Maid’).