BONSAI

Do you like bonsai? I love them!! Before I moved to Japan I was already fan of these small trees! My husband introduced me in the "bonsai-world" 4 years ago. He gave me as a Christimas-gift my first bonsai, which had 19 years old. After that, I started to buy small plants and tried to transform them in a bonsai, but it takes time and I had no idea how to do it! I read a lot of information from the internet, found interesting "bonsai-webpages", but when you have to do in practice it is quite different! So, at this period I didn't have enough time to do a bonsai course and for my fault my first bonsai died, I was very sad... but didn't give up!

When I knew that we were moving to Japan I though: "this is my chance to do a bonsai course and learn the real technique!" but is was not so easy so. A little bit far from my house there are 3 or 4 courses, but they speak only in japanese. It took around 6 months to find the right course, one which someone speaks English!

Around 2000 bonsai trees / Masumi-san teacher and I / Hiroichi Masumi-san.

Finally I found in the internet a bonsai course in Kyoto, which I go every month (two or three times) by train to do the course, it takes aroud 50min to get there. The place called Shohin Bonsai & Pots - Kyoto KOJU-EN (http://www.remus.dti.ne.jp/~masumi-t/0index.html), Tomohiro Masumi is my teacher and his father, Mr. Hiroichi Masumi is the President of the Shohin Bonsai Associattion. They are extremely professional and have a lot of patient to transmit the techniques. They are also reponsible for the exhibitions in Japan.

I thought the bonsai was very commun in Japan, but it isn't. Normally you not see a bonsai tree in the flowers-shop and the young people always says: "bonsai is for old people!", anyway, I don't think like that and I'm very happy to learn how to take care of a bonsai.