The exhibition opened today at 8:45am with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Unlike other openings only two short welcoming speeches were made, in Japanese of course.
Then we proceeded with cutting the ribbon welcoming visitors. I was very surprised that the foyer of the opening ceremony was not even filled. Usually it is packed with visitors, mostly from foreign countries. There was not a great presence of foreign visitors this year because most people are waiting for the upcoming 100th Kokufu Bonsai Exhibition in February. However, there were a good number of European visitors.
The exhibition was very sparse with visitors, but this allowed others to easily photograph the bonsai. Too bad, because this year there were quite a number of masterpiece bonsai beautifully displayed this year there and a good number of large size bonsai, Chinese huge size. There were only two or three shohin bonsai compositions, probably because this same building will be overflowing with hundreds of small-size trees in early-January. Last year I actually counted nearly 600 shohin and mame size bonsai.
The sales area was of course filled with everything should want for bonsai except for sale. I spent three days here, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and walked around in this room for 4.9 miles. We visited the exhibition until we almost dropped and had to take a short nap before dinner at our hotel resting up for the next day of bonsai study.
