The next morning saw us bright and early at Shinji Suzuki’s wonderful garden. Everything about Mr. Suzuki’s garden spoke of taste and refinement, from the trees, to the garden environs, the pots…even the tea, and obligatory snacks, were tasteful and high class.

While most all of the nurseries we visited had at least one, if not several, Kichou(registered large bonsai masterpiece) or Miyabi(registered shohin and chuhin cultural treasure) Bonsai, At the Suzuki garden, there were nearly more Kichou bonsai than we saw the entire rest of the trip!

American apprentices Matt Reel and Tyler Sherrod hard at work. In addition to these two talented gentlemen, Michael Hagedorn was also a Deshi here, once upon a time.

The first trees one sees upon entrance: those are NOT shohin. Around 5 feet tall, with the massive pots.

And, turning a corner…
A Few Bench Shots

Some Individual Trees

Mr. Suzuki’s famous Tosho

Sono in cerca di un vaso adatto a questa zattera, penso che se lo possa meritare un bel tokoname ;).Zattera di fagus crenata

My friend in the hotel lobby.

On Saturday morning we went to the opening of the Choseki Kai Suiseki Exhibition before heading on to the Taikan Bonsai Exhibition. We actually got there at 9am and the show opened at 10, so it was a quiet time to appreciate, study and photograph the stones and displays. The suiseki exhibition is annually held at the Kenniji Temple, the 800 year old Buddhist Temple, oldest in Kyoto. The old buildings are beautiful and unique, as are the ancient paintings and other art. Seiji Morimae, S-Cube in Hanyu, is the prime organizer of the event, and, as usual, did a smashing job with the show.

There were three full wall formal tokonoma each displaying one susiseki and a grass planting companion. The other stones were displayed along the walls on dark blue felt runners. Several interesting grass plantings were used as accents. The display…

Although beautiful, the Japanese maples in the garden temples are not quite at their peak of color yet. So, rather than share photos of colorful maples, I thought I’d share an interesting colorful character I saw in the sales area.

At first I noticed his hat and was wondering where he got those magnificent pins, then I looked closer and he freely posed for me.

Today was the opening day for the 33rd Taikan Bonsai Exhibition and I spent all day studying the bonsai. The exhibition was not quite as crowded as in the past, perhaps because its only Friday so I hope more visitors will come during the remaining weekend. There are quite a number foreigners at the exhibition, many from Europe.

I received a question about the last photo in Part 3 of a rather unusual display so today I got the information. The display is a “Horticultural…

Thursday was judging day for the Taikan Bonsai Exhibition. Julian Adams and I first went with the tour to visit the Ryoanji Temple, where I caught him selecting seed. We then took a taxi to the exhibition.

Julian Adams picking ripe seed from small leaf Japanese maples.

All the vendors were busy setting up their trees, containers, supplies, suiseki and other items necessary for the creation, maintenance and appreciation of bonsai. I saw Kenji Oshima, son on Mikio Oshima and congratulated him for winning the Prime Minister Award for the upcoming Japan Creator’s Bonsai Exhibition in early December. He was proud of a special display of one of his client’s trident maple bonsai.

Award winning bonsai artist, Kenji Oshima, Meiju-en Bonsai Garden in Okayama in front of his client’s display of Trident maple bonsai.

The first round of judging the bonsai was to select the finalists for the award selection…

Our Tokyo hotel lobby is on the 25^th floor. The entire wall behind the front desk is a plate glass window with an unbelievable view of Tokyo Tower and Mt. Fuji. Our group saw Mt. Fuji leaving S-Cube, and now this morning upon our check out from Tokyo. Looks like our group will be returning to Japan, perhaps on our February tour (no, sold out), but there is room for our new June tour to visit the colorful Satsuki bonsai festival and exhibition.

We spent all morning at the Shunka-en Bonsai Museum of Kunio Kobayashi in Tokyo. English bonsai artist Peter Warren who apprenticed with Mr. Kobayashi for six years warmly greeted us and gave us free reign of the complex and allowed us to photograph. Later on he gave an excellent tour, in English, which most people understood, especially the Australians. Corin Tomlinson, from England who apprenticed with…

After a two hour delay and airplane evacuation in Chicago due to tornadoes, we finally arrived in Japan for our semi annual bonsai tour led by Kora Dalager and me. This time we have a good small group of eleven people including two ladies from Australia.

Moving one of the February Kokufu bonsai ten exhibition prize winning trees to be loaded for display in the Taikan Bonsai Ten exhibition in Kyoto. This bonsai belongs to a client of Masahiko Kimura.

Beautyberry and Firethorn bonsai in the container room.

Tuesday we first visited Masahiko Kimura’s garden, near Omiya, by our private bus. As always, his bonsai are spectacular and although I’ve been visiting his garden for over 30 years, the trees looked the best this time. Our tour enjoyed glorious, warm sunny weather, and the bonsai took on a special glow, which reflected their unique beauty as well the tender loving…