With your time in Japan you need to educate us with your new found
knowledge.
Jerry Meislik
Whitefish Montana USA

Jerry:

I have spent much of the last forty years learning and experiencing
Japanese culture, so I did not feel overwhelmed. However, I am
fairly new to bonsai and suiseki with just a little over a decade of
experience.

During my stay I was fortunate to attend several major exhibits of
both bonsai and suiseki, join the activities of one of Japan's best
bonsai clubs, and even work a few hours as an apprentice at a bonsai
nursery. We also had the privilege of discussing bonsai and suiseki
with leading figures in China and Japan.

My biased opinions are based on the above experiences and mostly
very personal.

Bonsai:
There is no short cut to experience and to be competent one must spend
several years, perhaps a minimum of five, "doing bonsai" as the main
activity of each day. One must experience several annual growth cycles
to learn how each action or inaction effects the plants.
Bonsai require talent, or at least a fair amount of artistic aptitude as
well
as manual dexterity. Unfortunately I have little artistic ability and my
meager manual skills deteriorated completely due to arthritis. Consequently
I have to carefully adjust what I like, my artistic expectations, and my own
very limited capabilities. Many in China and Japan has financial resources
to make up for lack of talent or time; my station in life, that of a retired
person living on a fixed pension does not permit me to do that. And the
majority of our life savings were spent on this trip, an experience that was
worth every penny.
We found that both in China and Japan the vast majority of good bonsai
was created and are maintained by professionals for their clients. Amateurs,
having a go at it by themselves, are not better than our American
enthusiasts.
They have one large advantage, however, there is abundant and reasonable
priced raw material and potensai.
Bonsai also requires great patience, something that the modern generation
lacking. There is a trend in Japan toward "mini-bonsai," a sort of instant
gratification that I do not like. I believe that it is a business decision
by the
bonsai nurseries since after the busted bubble economy they had to find a
market, one that is more affordable to the masses.
We also found that bonsai in the Northern parts of China, Beijing, Shanghai
and Suzhou, was more like Japanese bonsai than Southern Chinese penjing.

Suiseki.
Once again we found that stone appreciation is a hobby for the wealthy
elite.
Good stones are expensive and practically impossible to find at their native
locations as professional "stone farmers" have harvested and continually
harvesting the areas. A stone farmer who finds a single good stone can
make more money than a agricultural farmer does in a year.
The differences between Chinese and Japanese stone aesthetics are
great and can't be summarized in a few lines. I hope to write about it at a
future time.

Homeland Security.
I brought back several stones, two fragile gongshi, Chinese scholar's
stones.
Bought are authenticated lingbi. We packed then among our clothes and they
survived
Chinese and Japanese inspections, and U.S. customs. After customs we had to
recheck our luggage in Chicago where Homeland Security luggage inspectors
tore into our twice checked luggage. After taking everything apart they
throw
the items backs into the bags at random. Our pleadings were ignored and we
were told to stay away from our luggage and that we couldn't touch them.
When
we arrived home we found that one of our beloved Chinese stones was broken
and in three pieces! And we also found that the inspectors left their tools
in
our luggage! We consulted an attorney, our younger son, who informed us that
the only thing we can do is to take a deep breath and exhale slowly. An
expensive
lesson. I should have learned from Lynn Boyd and hand carried them. They
would
probably stopped me at the gate and declared them as weapons.

All and all the trip was a great experience, the adventure of a life time.
Now I
am back home retired and broke. Still doing bonsai and suiseki at my limited
level, not expecting to leave a legacy to the National Arboretum, but
enjoying
every minute of it.

Cheers.

Peter Aradi
Tulsa, Oklahoma

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