Two movies from Taikan-ten

I have never been to a bonsai show in Japan. In fact, I have never been to a bonsai show other than the our local club show. So when I found out that this year Taikan-ten is going to be during the week of Thanksgiving I figured I should go. Negotiations with family did not take long either – being married to a saintly woman does help. And, by a happy coincidence I bought tickets that got me to Aichi-en (the nursery I visit once a year) the night before setup. I landed in Nagoya around 9PM and we left the next morning around 5:30AM. What jetlag?

Taikan-ten is arguably the second best show in Japan, after Kokufu-ten, which takes place in Tokyo around February (would be harder for me to attend because of teaching). Also, Kokufu is much more crowded and overwhelming. Both Janet Roth and Mas Nakajima of https://suisekiart.com/ said that I should consider going to Taikan-ten because it is much easier to enjoy and it take place during a much better time of the year than Kokufu, and I would always prefer Kyoto to Tokyo.

There are too many things to share in one blog so I think I will break it into a number of posts and I will start with two movies that I took at the show (and this is not to compete with Bjorn).
The first one is of the four winning trees from the last Kokufu. I stopped talking in the middle of it for two reasons: First, I forgot the name of the crab apple and, second, I almost collided with a masked man who was very interested in those trees as well. To watch the movie click here.

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The second movie is of one of my favorite trees at the show. It is a medium size tree and I overlooked it a couple of times I walked by it, but John Milton, one of the apprentices at Aichi-en drew my attention to it and I then I realized how amazing it is. I think I am really drawn to the understated beauty of this tree. To watch the movie click here.

After I fell in love with this tree I took a number of people to see it - here is Uchi taking a good look.

I will be writing other posts from Taikan-ten in the next few days so keep checking back. There are only 193 pictures in that folder :).