…the usual Japan bonsai experience in February.

I’m writing this in the snow-socked city of Nagano, 6 hours after my plane left from Narita Airport on the other side of Honshu. Waved vaguely in the direction of my apprentice Bobby Curttright, who enviously left Shinji Suzuki’s garden several days before I did and had a nice time visiting museums in slushy, but not ground-to-a-halt, Tokyo. Here we had over two feet of snow in less than 24 hours, much more in the mountains, and stopping the Shinkansen, bullet train, in its tracks.

This is why they held the winter Olympics here in 1998: Snow is likely.

But there is no snow in this post… at this point in our trip, we had no idea what was coming. Come to think of it, there are no photos of the Kokufu show either, where photos are not allowed (we have to wait…