bonsai tour, rain or shine
Sensei went to Osaka again today, presumably for business purposes, so yet again, we had no lesson. Jolene's in Osaka too, so I guess it's good timing for her so she doesn't have to miss another lesson, but I've been really itching to get back in there and work on a few projects lately, so it was a bit of a letdown for me. Fortunately, we're going to try for friday morning instead, before work. Hopefully that'll work out.
When Jay told me there was no lesson, we decided to get up anyway and take a little bike tour through Kinashi (鬼無). There were still a number of places I hadn't been, so it sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, today was kinda a rainy day. For the first part of the tour, the rain held off, but the latter half and return trip was a bit wet. Oh well.
But I met a couple of the nursery owners there, one of whom is an extremely friendly and kind younger man, from who I bought two really nice pots for much less than he should have sold them to us for. All in all, I picked up four new pots, two smaller ones with some really nice drawings around the outside and the two slightly larger reddish-brown, traditional-looking ones I bought from said man - all for ¥2700. Definitely quite happy, but, like most hobbies, bonsai isn't exactly easy to fund. Although for what I walked away with today, it was practically a steal.
One other place we went to had a bit of a museum in back with some really great trees in it, complete with alarm wire and cameras, which was a little bit incongruous. Definitely was worth the trip to get a chance to walk around these places and admire such a large collection of trees and pots!
It takes about 30-40 minutes to travel there, but with two people, you hardly notice the journey. Probably was some good exercise to get out there too, especially since Toshi called me this morning to tell me he was sick and couldn't get to the gym today. I swear everyone's sick - how I've managed to avoid it so far is beyond me.
When Jay told me there was no lesson, we decided to get up anyway and take a little bike tour through Kinashi (鬼無). There were still a number of places I hadn't been, so it sounded like a good idea. Unfortunately, today was kinda a rainy day. For the first part of the tour, the rain held off, but the latter half and return trip was a bit wet. Oh well.
But I met a couple of the nursery owners there, one of whom is an extremely friendly and kind younger man, from who I bought two really nice pots for much less than he should have sold them to us for. All in all, I picked up four new pots, two smaller ones with some really nice drawings around the outside and the two slightly larger reddish-brown, traditional-looking ones I bought from said man - all for ¥2700. Definitely quite happy, but, like most hobbies, bonsai isn't exactly easy to fund. Although for what I walked away with today, it was practically a steal.
One other place we went to had a bit of a museum in back with some really great trees in it, complete with alarm wire and cameras, which was a little bit incongruous. Definitely was worth the trip to get a chance to walk around these places and admire such a large collection of trees and pots!
It takes about 30-40 minutes to travel there, but with two people, you hardly notice the journey. Probably was some good exercise to get out there too, especially since Toshi called me this morning to tell me he was sick and couldn't get to the gym today. I swear everyone's sick - how I've managed to avoid it so far is beyond me.