On my return to Japan we have been pretty busy with the past Meifu-ten and The impending Kokufu-ten. Mostly the work has been styling/wiring with the occasional black pine/kuromatsu needle pulling.

I thought I would share a few of tree’s that I have recently wired and they are all black pines.

This is a kifu sized black pine.
I didn’t get round to taking a before picture, I should have done because it wasn’t a bad transformation. The tree was very dense, I pulled all the old needles and thinned out a fair bit before wiring.

Another tree I did was this shohin black pine. Again unfortunately I didn’t get round to taking a before pic. This also was a bit of refinement work for sales.
It is looking a bit yellow here but, has greened up since coming out of the cold for a while.

This is a Kuro…

Japanese flowering quince, Chaenomeles speciosa

After an uneventful and on-time arrival in Tokyo our group was “welcomed” by cold and wet snow. NO, I did not order the weather, in fact the meteorological conditions were better in Rochester than Tokyo. But, my wife, Diane, did get stuck at the airport in Newark for several days on her way home from the California Shohin Bonsai Seminar.

Kora Dalager’s and my International Bonsai Tour Exploration this time includes 20 people from New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Australia as well as from the United States. Four close friends from my “Crew” in Rochester joined me this time which are members of the Suiseki Study Group of Upstate New York and also officers of the Bonsai Society of Upstate New York. Two of us will have suiseki on display in the new Suiseki of Japan Exhibition opening on Sunday.

The Parkside Hotel in Ueno…