It came about almost accidentally, this trip to Japan; I was talking with a friend sometime last fall about my wish to go there and take in the Kokufu Show, the biggest bonsai event of the year held in Tokyo. He said he’d been there once with his wife and thought about returning…as the conversation wore on, it was clear to see we were in accord and plans were made. If you had asked me a year ago if this would be the year I’d be doing this, my answer would have been ‘probably not’ 😉  It turns out this year was a double show; opening week would be one set of trees, which were changed out on the weekend and a completely new set of trees were exhibited during the second week. The general public was not allowed to photograph the exhibit, so no photos of trees from the…

…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…

Usually, Alabama sees a few really nice days in the dead of winter, and that’s when I try to assess the soil situation. Before the Internet forums, in my circles, soil recipes were jealously-guarded secrets. Mostly because the ingredients were hard to find, and partly because it took effort to figure out. That old recipe had 6-9 ingredients, and was fairly organic, and somewhat redundant…grit, lava, haydite, river rock, and turface generally serve similar purposes. A good measure of bark, peat, and sphagnum moss rounded out the organic components.

Now, with the free exchange of information online, soil is like discussing politics. Everyone has an opinion, and very few agree. Since you’re reading my blog, I’ll presume you are interested in my opinion (on soil, that is)…which has changed from a long list of ingredients to a very short list:

1. Lava Rock (scoria, technically)
2. Akadama
3. River sand