Kyoto’s Ryoan-ji is best known for its stone garden – a rectangular plot roughly 25 meters by 10 meters featuring several clusters of stones set in a sea of white sand. There is a total of 15 stones, but only 14 are visible from any given vantage point. The stone garden was built near the […]
Excursions
Excursion posts feature visits to bonsai gardens in the U.S. and in Japan, visits to the Kyoto's Most Renown Gardens, and trips into the mountains to see junipers and pines in their natural setting.
Ninna-ji Temple
Let’s go to Kyoto! I thought I’d start out the new year with a recap of my visit to some of Kyoto’s fantastic gardens. My first stop was Ninna-ji Temple. Ninna-ji dates to the 9th century making it one of the older temples in a city full of old temples. Around a dozen buildings from […]
Omiya Bonsai Art Museum and environs
The people of Saitama City pooled impressive resources to open the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum in 2010. Billed as the world’s first publicly-operated bonsai art museum, the museum is home to outstanding trees, pots, stands, and historical documents relating to bonsai. Their brochure claims that three principles form the pillars of the museum’s activities: 1) The […]
Night auction
Towards the end of every month, bonsai professionals gather at a selected nursery for a night auction. The night auction is local to Central Japan and features material a step up from the 8 Auction, or Youkakai. Night auction The first thing I noticed is that trees and pots to be auctioned sat in a fairly […]
Million dollar bonsai
There was a lot of talk about a large white pine at the 11th Asia-Pacific Bonsai and Suiseki Convention & Exhibition (ASPAC 2011) offered for 100,000,000 yen. At today’s exchange rate, that’s close to 1.3 million dollars. Million dollar bonsai The tree was offered by S-CUBE, the bonsai organization headed by Seiji Morimae. The tree […]