#26 Jacob Michaels- Dogwood Studios Apprentice

[00:00:00] Speaker A: To baby trees. [00:00:03] Speaker B: Bonsai. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Banzai. Banzai. Banzai. [00:00:11] Speaker B: The Black Pondo Podcast. [00:00:18] Speaker A: The Black Pondo Podcast. So I think I'm at the peak of Mount Stupid right now with bonsai. I've been doing it for two years. I mean, you yourself, you've been doing it probably, what, eight years longer than I have. So I recognize I have a lot of thoughts and notions about bonsai, and I can imagine looking back on them now when I'm in your position or when I'm in Tyler's position and just being like, what a moron. So I guess with that disclaimer of I'm ready to be wrong about things that I'm like, I'm maybe have a soapbox about, we'll talk about some of those. And it could be just totally off base or misinformed or. You know, one of my things is like, why is there no good Japanese black pine grow fields in the U.S. like, the American Southeast is basically the same kind of climate as Takamatsu, where their growing fields are. But you can't find a. A black pine with. With flaky bark on it for, like, under $500. So, you know, hey, maybe there's a grower in Georgia that I'm just ignorant about, but that's one of those things that. That drives me crazy that I pick your brain on. I know you're growing some trunks out there in California. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And I think that's a great core philosophy that you have, and it was really interesting for you to hear you break that down. So I think that's fantastic. But I know, you know, you know a lot about bonsai, and I think you're being modest there, so. But it's. It's good to take things from a modest perspective. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So you'll have to forgive me. I majored in philosophy, particularly Eastern philosophy. So I'll just. I'll pull a random quote out and every now, and it's just humor. The philosophy major, there's a famous Japanese samurai named Musashi that said to know the way broadly is to see it in all things. Once you recognize how to get good at one thing, you recognize you can get good at anything. And you can also recognize kind of the pitfalls along the way, so. So I owe so much of that quick progression in bonsai to beating my head against the wall in jiu jitsu for years. Gratefully, this one is maybe easier on the body, but I. A lot of my reference points to skill acquisition come from a life in the martial arts. For sure. [00:02:40] Speaker B: That's fantastic. Yeah, I feel like from Jiu Jitsu, I've taken a lot of know, I've, I've learned quite a bit. And for me, like one of them is you're supposed to be bad at everything. In the beginning, like, you know, I thought I would be good going into Jiu Jitsu as a white belt, but I was actually really, really bad. And it just took time, you know, it took time. It took mat time really to really, to acquire those skills and become more proficient, learn those techniques. So I kind of feel like everyone is supposed to start as a white belt and over time you'll just get better and better. And over time I've, I've gotten better and I know you have as well with bonsai and Jiu Jitsu. Yeah. [00:03:27] Speaker A: So I, I recognized it as a, a matter of reps. But just like how you can kind of, if you're drilling against a kind of unresisting opponent in Jiu Jitsu, it's not an honest representation of what that technique is going to look like under the constraints of live sparring to translate that into bonsai. I think there's merit in having what we'd call like beginner material. But I recognized, oh, if I want to get really good, let's say great at this thing we call bonsai, I need good material. I need reps of wiring again and again and again. So if I have just my starter procumbens and I, you know, whatever, make my one action on that plan and then it's okay. Now we wait for a year, maybe two years, and I recognize this is not going to be fast enough of a skill progression for me. I need higher quality material and more of it, as much as I can, as often as I can, which is, you know, I found myself in a kind of unique position and we can kind of get into this whole history. But I had all of this pent up energy of I'm going to go to law school. And then when I saw law school, I was like, I don't want to go to law school anymore. But I have now worked for years of studying and readying myself and taking the lsat. Now I've got this kind of crazy energy of I've broken myself too many times on Jiu Jitsu. I'm in Carolina, I'm new, this place is beautiful. And bonsai is kind of come into my life at the same time. It's like, okay, all of this energy I was going to direct towards graduate school professional studies. I have Treated bonsai with that energy. So studying Kokofu books Studying Bonsai youy with Bjorn Mirai Live with Ryan Video after video podcasts like this getting as so even if I'm not hands on with a plant, bonsai is on the mind. I'm learning about specimen tree. I'm, you know, I'm learning about different species, I'm learning about different techniques and just trying to incorporate it as much as I can into my life. And that was my from day one to I think, yeah, I've hit my two years in bonsai. My first club meeting with Triangle Bonsai Society was either November or December of 2022. And now I'm, I'm about to really begin my apprenticeship on the 1st of January. [00:06:04] Speaker B: Awesome. Man, that is so cool. Wow. You really haven't been into it for that long. However, I'm impressed with what I've seen so far and also very impressed. Just want to give you a shout out for how well or how good of a speaker you are. Like, I can see, I can hear maybe like the potential law school thing going just because I feel like you're a good speaker. I'm impressed. This is something I'm working on. [00:06:34] Speaker A: If you ask me to talk about football, you're going to just kind of watch me shrink against the wall and not be able to say two things. But we talk about the tiny trees. Yeah, I can seem to talk forever and ever. I would probably attribute some of that to my experience working in the intelligence community. Like a big part of my job was just, hey boss, this is everything that happened last night in front of a room of pretty senior military and civilian TOD employees. And so that was always just kind of like you have that rush of public speaking. But when it's your 400th time public speaking in that kind of high stakes environment, you just become more familiar with it. Which is coming back to what we had said before to get good at bonsai, getting in the reps, to do it properly a lot under kind of realistic constraints for sure. [00:07:24] Speaker B: So what was your previous position backing up? I, I want to hear your or your kind of bonsai origin story and yeah, what's been going on? Because I know you had some big changes in your life very recently. So yeah, back up what, what was your position before? [00:07:44] Speaker A: So to kind of start it at the top. My name is Jacob Michaels. I am currently the first apprentice at Dogwood Studios under Tyler Sherrod, who he himself studied under the great Mr. Shinji Suzuki in Oguse, Japan before this. Two months out of high school, back in 2010, I enlisted in the United States Navy. For my first five years, I was an anti terrorism kind of law enforcement specialist. The Navy traditionally calls this position a Master at arms. But I was a cop and a guard and this, that, and the third. And in that kind of five year mark after deployment, I had the opportunity to switch careers into cryptology. And I finished out my career in Hawaii working for the NSA and doing cryptology. I wanted to see behind that closed door of, oh, what's a top secret clearance like? And then I saw it and I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm out of here. But you guys keep. You guys keep doing this. While I was in Hawaii, there's a huge kind of Japanese history and culture. Over 50% of tourism in Hawaii comes from Japan. A huge part of the population is of Japanese ancestry. So while I was there. Let me kind of pause there. I loved being a sailor in the idea of kind of traditional things of. And it might come up here. I. I curse like a sailor. I'm gonna do my best to keep it to a minimum, but it's ingrained in me at this point. Mama tried, I promise, but I swear like a sailor, and I love to get tattooed like a sailor. You know, they're probably. When I was 20, 26, I had had a good deal of American traditional sailor tattoos in a sleeve and was thinking, God, what, what, what can I complement this traditional classic look of one arm with? And the answer, pretty kind of immediately was Japanese traditional tattooing. They're the kind of two styles that have stayed for decades and decades and always look good. There's some kind of tattoo fads out there. And to body Japanese traditional is not one of them. I had just googled Japanese tattoos. Oahu. I saw a guy whose style looks similar to, oh, you'll know. Dylan Danis. Dylan Danis, as cringe as he is, has a great, great Japanese sleeve. And he was, he does. He was getting that. That's. That was Tabori done by Horizakura in New York City. So I brought that video of Dylan to this guy, and he says, oh, that's my tattoo brother. Yeah, I do this style. So it was this kind of serendipity of. I just happened to walk into a Tabori studio and this man's name is Tatsutoshi at Tatsutoshi the first on Instagram. He is an immensely talented individual. And the kind of the rub of getting traditional j. Japanese tattooing is I say it hurts three times less. It takes Three times longer. So you spend a ton of time with, with your artist and you begin to develop a quite a deep relationship with them. And in that, Tatsutoshi is about six years older than I am. I'm 32. And so that's that kind of right age for older brother ness. So what older brother thinks is cool, I think is cool. And his, his hobby when he was not in the tattoo shop was bonsai. So I know for you, you know, Daniel San cutting the procumbens for me, like, I have no memory of the bonsai in Karate Kid, just the fighting. So it wasn't until I was 26, 27, when Tatsutoshi said, google Ryan, Neil, look up Mirai Live. So the first, the first time I saw what we, we call bonsai, like when we're thinking of it, Ryan was standing next to the tree. So it's just a classic, beautiful, huge American piece of yamadori. And from that point I was like, oh, oh, I'm, I'm in. I'm interested. This is, this is cool. So being stationed in Oahu, I meet Tatsutoshi. Oh, Japan's cool. 2019, I get out of the service and I go to Asia to train for a summer before I start undergrad using my GI Bill in Manhattan. So I was training in Bangkok. I had made some friends there and one of the friends says, you know, oh, I'm not going to see you. I'm going up to Tokyo to do a tournament up there. Well, hell, man, it's, it's five hours from Bangkok. It was like a $200 flight better than the 23 hour flight from the East coast and $1,500 or something like that. So I, you know, two days later I was in Japan and spent that first week with him. It was a, what is it? IJJF. IJJF tournament at the old 60s Tokyo Olympic Stadium. It's beautiful. It was awesome. And then I backpacked across Japan, dropping in at different Jiu Jitsu academies. So I was really doing the kind of full Ronin thing of, you know, traveling around Japan and training at different gyms. And that was really, that was really it for me with Japan, like before that, even with Tobori. I was like, oh, this is cool. I like it for the tattoo sake of it, but I wasn't really interested in Japanese culture. But the trip had me feeling like how I felt when I lived on the North Shore of Oahu. Like this place is inherently special. There's some magic in the kind of countryside of Japan that I really felt like how do I incorporate this place with my American life? I love being an American, I'm proud to be an American. But the Japanese are so antithetical to how their culture is that there was some yin yang appeal to it for me as an American. I got back to Bangkok after the trip and I had an email from my school that said, hey, your Portuguese from the Jiu Jitsu has been dropped. You need to select a new language for your major or for your ba. So I picked Japanese. And you see how this starts to kind of tie in one after another. The philosophy I did was a concentration in Eastern thought Buddhism. And then we, my, my girlfriend at the time and I, she got into UNC Chapel Hill on a basically a full ride. So it was kind of a no brainer for us to come down here. And while I'm still kind of kicking the can on law school or not, I'm getting into bonsai. And she's so busy with law school that it's like all my spare time is kind of dumped into getting better at bonsai. Which brings us up to now. So kind of got interested in Japanese culture by being stationed in Hawaii, got more interested in the culture through undergrad and then took this kind of pent up New York. I have a 500 square foot apartment, energy of I want plants and things. And then when we moved down to Carolina and finally had space, it was like the doors blew off. Quickly endeared myself to one of the club's more advanced practitioners and just kind of that classic I will pull weeds, I will dig your mulch, I will do you know what? If it would shit, sit there and shut up, I'll do that too, but please let me be around your trees. And so that was really this kind of feeling of if I'm not going to be an apprentice, if I can't commit myself to moving to Japan full time in this because I have a relationship and I've got this new life I'm building in Carolina. How can I maximize bonsai in my life? And it was every off day I'm going to my teacher's garden, I'm buying my own nursery stock and really trying to maximize everything I can as kind of semi self taught. Lots of Mirai videos and when I can, going to my teacher's house. So when I hit this point of now single at a desk job, I don't care about what am I doing here. Well, this is the moment, right? Is I said if I wasn't in A relationship, I would be an apprentice full time. So I'm not in a relationship. Here's the apprenticeship. I've known Tyler for a few years, and he and I had a few conversations throughout the fall of what apprenticeship would look like. He was very kind of conciliatory of the things that I was interested in doing with bonsai. Just as an example. Like, collecting is one of my, like, favorite kind of passion, niche parts of bonsai is to either go up into the mountains or to do yard a dory. Doesn't matter to me. I love doing it. So I asked for, hey, can I have time every year that I can go to the mountains and collect and come back and you know, hey, that's fine, and those kinds of things. I think for me, the, the decision to be an American apprentice, as opposed to an American in a Japanese apprenticeship was, was twofold. I have pets. I. I have a dog that I got right back from deployment and divorce when I was 23 years old. So he's. He's been all around the world with me at this point. And I, I just had this kind of feeling like I bro, you've been with me through everything. I can't get rid of you. Just because I want to go be a weeb. You know what I mean? Just because I have this Japanese fantasy. There's that part of it and then there's the realist. I have VA services that I need and I utilize and I just wouldn't have access to my chronic pain, my chronic nerve damage pills if I was doing a deshi experience in Japan. Whereas there's a VA right down the road for me here in the of Charlotte greater area. [00:17:38] Speaker B: Awesome. [00:17:38] Speaker A: That's from 2010 to 2024, from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, middle of nowhere, to around the world and back. [00:17:49] Speaker B: Gotcha. And so. So you and your girl girlfriend have broken up. That was a while back. And yeah, that was kind of end. [00:17:56] Speaker A: Of the summer was the, the kind of breaking point. I had gone to Japan in the spring. The summer was kind of weird, I guess. And then it had finally just you know, completely collapsed by the end of it. So there was this, you know, I moved here for her, moved here for the relationship kind of feeling. Well, you know, if we kind of bring it back to Rogan, Joe Rogan and his. His illustrious podcast is divisive Podcast. He had this old clip he used to do for on it where he talked about what does the hero of the movie do? Do that and in kind of the least cynical way, really sitting there in that moment of what, what does the hero do? What if I'm writing this story, what's the next move? And the next move is I've been kind of putting myself on the back burner for the good of the relationship. I moved here for her schooling. Now it's. I have this professional dream. The only thing that makes sense to me is to go whole hog into it. And it's been just white knuckle, gnarly from August to this kind of last week in December, I moved over the course of two days, I moved all my household goods, the three hour difference from Durham to kind of Statesville, where I ended up moving, and then the next day drove back and moved 50 trees that I had in my backyard to Tyler's garden. So now I have my own area of the garden. And that was another appeal of kind of staying on the east coast, was that I would get to keep the majority of my collection and get to see it develop alongside Tyler's. [00:19:43] Speaker B: Totally makes sense. And you get to collect Yama or Yamadori and Yardadori, which is, yeah, very. [00:19:51] Speaker A: This was important in, in anticipation of, of having this chat with you. And on my 23 hour drive back home from South Dakota over the last couple days, I've of course listened to some Black Pondo podcasts and I listened to the two most recent ones with Satyama and Mr. Aaron Packard. And if you guys haven't listened to them, they're both great. And I actually, let me just kind of sidebar. Jeremiah, I gotta say, you have gotten as a podcast host markedly better. Like every time that you do this, I can tell that you're getting better and more comfortable in the kind of conversation of it. So shout out you, buddy. [00:20:27] Speaker B: I have a long way to go go there. And going back to our initial thing, I think everyone starts as a white belt in everything that they do, you know, and for me, I feel like a white belt in podcasting still. But hopefully I can get to that next level and I will keep, keep working on it. But thank you very much. Appreciate it. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, luckily there's no shortage of people to talk to about trees. So in why I brought that up now is Satyama was talking about the kind of, the ethics of collecting and the kind of collecting he does. I couldn't agree more. It's absolutely imperative to do that ethically with permits and the approval from the kind of federal agencies that control that, with collecting on the mind. With that I have a slight jealousy, I guess, of the west coast and a Kind of solution for my east coasters. You know, the west coast is just rife with awesome connoisseurs, Conifer, Yamadori, and us over on the east coast, it's like we have good conifers, but the locations in which would be kind of prime to collect are more or less illegal to collect. So what's a. What's an East Coast Yamadori lover to do? And this is. This is kind of my. My blanket challenge for east of the Mississippi bonsai enthusiasts. We have absolutely fantastic deciduous Yamadori collection potential to go one step further with that. I encourage any enthusiast that wants to dig trees to go find the invasive species that are blanketing basically the American East. Callery pear, also known as. I think it's bradberry pear, has a beautiful white flower on it. It's known to stink, and it kind of. It's a. What do they call that ornamental all over the East Coast. You can ask now. Tokutake next time you see him. I sold him one of my teachers. It's. They make beautiful bonsai. Oriental bittersweet is another. It's a weird vine that kind of has this yellow wrapping on it and this beautiful bright red little fruit. And that is. It blankets kind of the Northeast and then the Southeast has Wisteria, Oriental bittersweet and Wisteria. It's almost impossible to find a Kokofu 10 book that doesn't have either one of these. So it's clear that they can be brought to the highest level of bonsai. They make interesting kind of shapes while they climb up the trees. They're incredibly easy to collect. You can basically no root, you know, kind of chamfered bottom. Cut those away from trees. So we're saving the lives of the native loblollies and various hardwoods that are growing in those forests and getting good. What good material that has potential for bonsai. So Callery pear, Oriental bittersweet, wisteria. If you guys go out and collect those this spring, tag Jeremiah, tag me. I want to see them. I've got a couple that I'm just like, chomping at the bit to go collect. I got approval from my HOA back in Durham to just kind of go hog wild in the woods that is part of the subdivision. And I've. There's a. I mean, freaking tree trunk wisteria that I am, you know, fiending to go get in March. Um, so that's my. That's my challenge to. To east coast collectors, as it were, is. Is find those interesting. Good for Bonsai, invasive species and, and have atom. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Ah, love to hear you say that. I 100% echo those points and I think that is so smart of you. And I want to see more deciduous on the east coast being collected. I think that needs to be a really big thing. So I'm stoked for you there. I 100am stoked on that. That's fantastic. [00:24:15] Speaker A: I think that it kind of solves the one, if it's a problem for you. The one problem with traditional Yamadori is that there is a little bit of a feeling of like oh, that tree was fine for 400 years by itself and took it off the mountain. There is that part of you that's like particularly for non bonsai enthusiasts they're like, oh, you took it out. And you'll see on like I love the backcountry boys. They're great. And you'll see sometimes they'll post collection videos and you'll have just the randoms that are so angry at them because it is an old beautiful piece. Now we know that it's basically zero ecological impact for it to take one tree out of the enormous swath that is the kind of Rocky Mountains. It, it's not that big of a deal but for me on the east coast, not like one, I don't have that. Two, it's a kind of guilt free collection. If I kill an oriental bittersweet during collection, I'm not going to cry like I do if I kill the 100 year old spruce. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Totally. [00:25:17] Speaker A: It's like so I'm not saying don't collect with. Without respect. I absolutely. You have, you know, the responsibility of a living thing and you should treat it as such. But there is lower stakes I guess. [00:25:33] Speaker B: Nice. [00:25:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:35] Speaker B: You know, I saw a video of some, I think they were called Chokecherry that you posted. Were those from Tyler's collection? [00:25:44] Speaker A: So that was in my, my teacher's collection. So my, my teacher is a private retired business executive. He was an inventor. If you've ever seen like wine bottles that have like artificial cork in them, he invented that. He invented pool noodles. He's a genuine brilliant man, but he's quite private. If I say to east coast enthusiast Ed, or Belgian Ed, they'll know who I'm talking about. But yeah, he, he maintains a pretty low profile but is one of the best kind of east coast artists around and he loves to work with those natives. He did. I can send you a picture of it later. One of those chokeberry compositions on a big rock in a beautiful blue Sui bond for our winter silhouette show. And I mean, dark red maroon berries on that blue was really fantastic. So that's my teacher Ed was his study group here, or rather there in the triangle area. Was the first group to hire Tyler when he came back from Japan and from his apprenticeship. So in this looking for an apprenticeship, you know, my teacher's word I trust heavily. There's few men I respect more in this world. So when he said, you know, give. Give Tyler a serious consideration. Of course I already was. But that carries weight for me. The relationship that my teacher Ed has with Tyler only served to kind of strengthen this Southeast American bonsai building that I think I'm trying to strive towards as the next generation of professional. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Fantastic. Yeah, I love, love those chokecherries. That's what it's called, right? Chokecherry. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:27:41] Speaker B: Great one for bonsai for sure. I love the berries are really cool. I hope to see more of those collected as well. [00:27:46] Speaker A: I'll see if I can get a couple rooted cuttings to ship off to you in California. Get to play with. [00:27:51] Speaker B: Sweet. Nice. [00:27:55] Speaker A: Hold on though. Speaking of your trees, we haven't even talked about this. Your freaking redwood in the show was. It's got to be one of the best trees in the U.S. i mean, like, just hats off to you and Peter. It is so cool. Every time I go look at it, I get excited. The pot that now made for it crushed the mossing is exquisite. So just, you know, all the. Is a badass tree. [00:28:25] Speaker B: Thank you so much, man. Really appreciate it. I had a lot of fun with that tree, developing it from Yamadori, which I got from Bob Scheiman. And it's a fun tree to work on for sure. Very time consuming, though. I pinch it quite frequently. [00:28:41] Speaker A: And then. [00:28:42] Speaker B: Thank you so much. [00:28:43] Speaker A: Kind of the directors. It was called the Director's Award after the fact. [00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They just. Thank you so much. They just sent me the actual award, which. Which is really cool. They had a guy who. Who also made a couple really cool stands for Michael Hagedorn. Some metal. [00:29:06] Speaker A: Metal work. [00:29:07] Speaker B: And he created these. Yeah, I was very impressed with it when I saw it in person. So I hope they keep doing something similar with the awards. I was really pumped to receive that. [00:29:20] Speaker A: It was. It was a bummer to not be able to make it to pbe. I had been planning kind of the whole year, but then I had this kind of weird turn of serendipity. My choice was basically it came down to do. I do an intensive with Todd Schlafer out in Denver or do I go to PBE now kind of with in mind what we just talked about of my obsession with just more time working on high level trees there. I wanted to meet you in person. I wanted to meet now in person and a handful of others, but it was. But really I just want to work on trees. I'm going to spend the whole time walking around looking at other people's awesome trees and then just feel like I need to work on something. That combined with my. My close childhood best friend lives just north of Denver. So I was able to kind of sleep on a cot in his spare bedroom. And so I was able to save, you know, a few hundred dollars in lodging when I went to Todd's. I actually. So I, I know that you went and spent a little bit of time at the Pacific Bonsai Museum with Aaron. I have a fun anecdote that I think you'll dig from working with Todd. Todd is, you know, great at what he does. It was. Couldn't recommend if you're in that kind of Denver area to go take an intensive with Todd. Fantastic. You get to work on his just exceptional yamadori in doing this. I met one of the other intensive students was a retired Coast Guardsman. So I'm former Navy coasty. Like there's a kind of sibling, sibling rivalry, a sibling affection there among sailors. We hit it off and however long after the intensive, he hit me up. He said, hey, I talked to my wife, I talked to Aaron. What do you think about coming to volunteer with me at the museum for Friday? Saturday? On Sunday we'll go out and we'll work at Dan Robinson's place. And then on Monday, Puget Sound Bonsai is hosting Ryan and he, you know, he never really goes out to clubs anymore. What do you think of that? Do you want to come out? You can stay at my place and I'll drive your all around to us. Well, I guess, you know, like so that was like an unplanned trip that whatever I sold some Shoyuro GIs to make happen for the airfare. All my love and appreciation for that friend that, that hosted me. All the love and appreciation to Aaron for allowing it to happen. But that was, you know, peak for me to get to sit next to Aaron too as Ryan is working on a really old Engelman spruce is, you know, if I was 13, it would be the equivalent of getting to watch Hendrix. It's like, what is he doing? I don't, I don't understand. Oh, and then looking at Aaron. Like how do I. How do I. You know, there's a. I recognize I can get good at this, but I'm like, he's so far ahead and it. That that just charges me up to like work harder to get to see kind of real. I mean Ryan's brilliant, I feel. So to get to see him in person like that and doing his thing was awesome. And then getting to sit and talk with Aaron about the limitless potential of bonsai was also fun. I think Aaron and I have a shared history of both being teenage skater kids. I think probably inherent in that is a little bit of anti conformity inclination to do things our own way. Or if it's already been tried to. Oh that's. That's played out. I want to have my thing. And so we were of the same mind as that. I know he and Ryan both enjoy what Teppei Kojima is doing with Tradman in Japan. I'm also just a huge fan of what he's doing. I think that there's a opportunity for really bonsai is a veblen good. It kind of always has been practiced by the wealthy and so to pair it with other luxury items seems like a no brainer. He's doing it extremely well in Japan but I think there is certainly space for that to be done here. [00:33:54] Speaker B: Is it Tradman? [00:33:56] Speaker A: Tradman T R A D so traditional man. Right? Trad. So he is doing what is seen as a traditional art bonsai and pairing it with. What has he done? Land Rover, Aston Martin. Levi's is the newest one. [00:34:15] Speaker B: I saw the Levi one. [00:34:17] Speaker A: Levi one's badass. So for my kind of experience with Jiu Jitsu and Shoya Roll, Albino and preto, there's a numerous kind of streetwear centric Jiu Jitsu brands. I mean Shoyol has done a garden GI before. That would be in my kind of list of bonsai daydreams. Doing a collaboration where I can marry Dogwood Studios bonsai with that love of Jiu Jitsu into whatever man. Rash guards another Garten GI variant. Those kinds of things. Combining the high art senses of fashion with bonsai is something that I. I think about every day. How we can marry those and how we can give bonsai different perspectives. Right. So we think about the tokonoma as a traditional display. And this is. We commonly associate bonsai being inside. It's really because we brought something inside to curate a vibe that's essentially what a tokonoma is. We'll put the scroll we Put a little tempe, we put a nice tree and we're curating a vibe that's in young American speak. That's what we're doing. So I think that that kind of curation vibe, curation, if you will, can be done in different ways. It doesn't have to be constrained to the classical. I, I chose a boss that, that loves the classical Japanese approach, the classical Japanese appreciation. And I think that I have a love of both. But I would love kind of classical aesthetics brought into contemporary spaces, if you will. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Solid. I love it. Yeah. I feel like that is a more and more popular idea and theme that's going on within bonsai in the United States. And I'm on board. I like it. I like both. I like classic and I like a bit of experimental. So love to hear that. [00:36:33] Speaker A: So for me it's like the. The Triangle Bonsai Club has the opportunity to have a few public facing shows. They do one in collaboration with the NC Museum of Art called Art in Bloom. The main focus of this paid show is florists. Botanists are given a work of art within the museum and then they make kind of a arrangement, a bouquet or whatever based upon that art. And then in the garden on the backside of the museum, TBS puts on kind of an outdoor curated show. So these are. Because it's a paid show, these are people that want to see both plants and art. So their brains are already kind of tuned for this. And then it's a different reaction when they see the bonsai. Like the. I love that man, that I can't get enough of that. That. Oh, this switch from I thought I knew what bonsai was to it can be this. We can do fruit and flowers and why is it, why has it got that dead stuff on it? Oh, that's how it's supposed to look in the mountains. Oh, and these. And then because they're kind of plant initiated, they start asking these horticultural questions, they start asking design questions. And so back to what Aaron was saying in your last podcast, this. I don't necessarily see myself as someone that's going to get get people doing bonsai, but I certainly can see myself as one that is putting bonsai in front of people and as greater appreciators of the art of it. It's one thing to see a little shohin procumbens in Daniel San's hand. It's another thing to see an O mono Ponderosa indoors. Visual impact of our kind of American King of pines is a holy shit factor just exponentially higher. Than what a. What a procumbens in your hand can ever do. It just is so to to go back home like you know, Sioux Falls is. I moved away from my hometown in 2010. There was about 150,000 people that lived in the really only city of South Dakota. I just went back. It's at like 250,000 now. So 100,000 people have moved to my hometown in the last 14 years and it seems kind of a population ripe for an interest in bonsai. So this is sidebar. If you are a Black Pondo podcast lover, as I am, and you're also a South Dakota resident, holler at me. Ogwood Apprentice message me. That is another one of my kind of bonsai daydreams is how do I. How do I do my apprenticeship wholly and fully and also support the bringing up of a club in my hometown, a place that would be excellent for bonsai. Large yards, disposable income, a connection to the mountains. The Black Hills of South Dakota is an offshoot of the Rockies. So there's all the great stuff we love there, the spruces and the pondos and the Rocky Mountain junipers. So I have a lot of kind of dreams, goals, things I would like to see happen in Bonsai. That's certainly one of them. If I could raise a club in my hometown to the level at which then I can return to my hometown as a professional, put on shows, put on these kind of displays in collaboration with locals, using native material to South Dakota. That's the kind of idea that gets me up in the morning, gets me pumped to do bonsai. [00:40:23] Speaker B: Awesome. Love to hear it. One of the going back just a second ago, I I really like that you use the term holy shit factor for Ponderosa. And I feel like Ponderosa, our big native Yamadori, has some of the best Holy shit factor. I think I'm going to start using that. I like that term. [00:40:45] Speaker A: I just. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Wanted to ask you so that's fantastic also about starting a club back in your hometown and I feel like might be kind of challenging as an apprentice, but yeah, like afterwards I would love to see that. Do you plan to move back home after your apprenticeship or. Or where do you see yourself ultimately? [00:41:10] Speaker A: I think it's too early to say. I've batted around a few ideas in a few locations. I've moved. Hell, I think I've moved 15 times in 14 years. The the Navy and then getting out and going to undergrad and then moving directly after undergrad and then moving again to my begin my apprenticeship I've had the opportunity to live in a lot of places. I would say that the south and the tropics have kind of broken me to the idea of ever living again in South Dakota full time. You know, just going back for the week of the holidays. And my mom's birthday was the sobering. You may be from the north, but you're not a northerner anymore. Oh my God, it's cold. So I. And then weighing these things right too. So I. I love what ponder. Ponderosas can do for Ponderosas can do for bonsai, but they don't. They don't thrive in North Carolina. Larches don't thrive in North Carolina. A lot of spruces don't thrive. So there's these holy shit factor conifers that I'm kind of missing out on. Being this far south and this humid, these kind of mild winters. So it's going to be a balancing act of maybe there's a right time, maybe not. Maybe I meet a nice Carolina girl and begin kind of the rest of my life here as a professional. It is one of the kind of highest concentrations of bonsai is in North Carolina. Ideal climate, ideal kind of history, I guess is here we have the public collection in Asheville, the NC Arboretum, which is headed up by Arthur Jura. Danny Coffey is a Japanese trained professional that also works out of Asheville. Tyler being in hickory, is about 45 minutes outside of Asheville. So there's this kind of notion that perhaps western North Carolina or North Carolina at large could become a Northern California, Portland kind of equivalent. You know, you ha. You guys from Northern Cali all the way up to, you know, Michael and Ryan in Portland. And since those two have moved there, there's a whole gang of other Portland professionals that have risen up. So it will have to be one of those things that I've done a few things as the apprentice, but my first kind of day in, day out working in the garden won't start until January 1st. Tyler asked me in our conversations leading up to this specifically, worry about your professional life when you're a professional. Worry about being an apprentice when you're an apprentice. For me, this is very much. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. It's a Ram Dass be here now. Those things will work themselves out. There's, there's. This is going to be the last time in my bonsai life where it's. I just get to worry about the trees or I just have to worry about the trees. All that kind of small business owner shit. That goes into being a professional bonsai artist is something I gotta, I get to not disregard completely because I don't want to get hit like a wave with it at the end of the apprenticeship. But it doesn't have to be my, one of my primary concerns right now. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Totally. [00:44:35] Speaker A: So I'm going to do my best to adhere to that. I mean. And during that same meeting, Tyler told me Mr. Suzuki's Oyakata told him on his deathbed to make good bonsai and make good students. When Tyler left Japan, Mr. Suzuki said to him, make good bonsai, make good students. And Tyler said he intends to do just that. So I have total faith in my boss to guide me, as it were, on this apprenticeship to professional pipeline that I find myself on. [00:45:11] Speaker B: I love it. I think that's fantastic advice and I think that will work really well. And you don't know what's going to go down over the next several years, what type of opportunities you might, might, might stumble across. So yeah, I think that makes total sense. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Five years ago, all of our lives were different, you know, not, not really by any means, but just to think of how for the, for good and for bad for a lot of people, how much it changed life, that kind of can pop up next month. So I try not to sweat it too much if I'm gonna think about the future. I try to have fun with it. What would like, you know, I see a lot of the professionals, they basically get old horse farms and then they refurbish them to make them bonsai studios and growing fields. There are plenty of old horse farms allowed around from New Hampshire to another spot in North Carolina. So it's, that's fun to think about. What would my own garden look like? But I'm so proud to be a Dogwood Studios apprentice. The first one that I'm happy to work under my, my boss, as long as he'll have me at this point. [00:46:29] Speaker B: How long, how long have you discussed staying so far or is there. [00:46:35] Speaker A: We have had a kind of handshake commitment on three years. For me it's, you know, a traditional apprenticeship is five years and that's what I want. So at that three year mark, we'll kind of renegotiate if there's, if I have made myself more valuable, we can discuss that if it's a, hey, what Chris Baker is doing in the Chicago Botanical Garden is for veterans particularly is badass. I want to go have that museum experience for a few months maybe. You know, I take a three month Chicago break from my apprenticeship and then go finish the next two years after that again. That's three years for sure. I'm here busting butt in the garden and then it's those kind of next two years. Do I split them between Tyler's place and Mr. Suzuki's place in Japan on a tourist visa? What happens? So for now, from 2025 through 2028, I'm in Newton, North Carolina, doing my Love It. [00:47:37] Speaker B: That's great. What appeals to you about Tyler's work? Or why did you select him ultimately? I know you spoke on it briefly, but I'm curious. Why Tyler? [00:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a big question too. There are many artists, both in the US and worldwide, I greatly respect and admire. We already talked about Ryan and your own teacher. I think Peter T is just shown himself to be probably the bonsai artist working today. He is exceptional in both conifers and deciduous, so I. I have great admiration for him. He also has apprentices already. Michael Hagedorn has apprentices already. So a lot of it is serendipity in timing. Since Tyler's return from his apprenticeship, he's spent a huge chunk of his time on the road. The average bonsai professional, especially when you're building your name, can spend over 200 days on the road. 2025 was the year that Tyler had planned to make the transition from spending the majority of time at home to building out his garden, Dogwood Studios, and to begin offering intensives every month. So when I hit this point in fall 2024, where I was ready to make the leap into apprenticeship, its timing lined up fantastically well for both of us. I had conversations with a few different professionals, but ultimately, Tyler's high level skill, his experience, and his continued relationship with Mr. Suzuki, his willingness to entertain my own goals in bonsai and his location in Western North Carolina, all of these kind of combined made the decision to Dogwood Studios versus Apprentice, a decision I think him and I both are really happy with. [00:49:26] Speaker B: Fantastic. I absolutely think you made the right choice. I love Tyler. He is an incredible person and a phenomenal bonsai craftsman and artist. And yeah, I actually have a kind of a history with him. Like both, both of us did Boone's intensive series back in the day, like before he went to Japan. Yeah. And so I. I got to know Tyler back then. Back then. And such a cool guy, such a good guy. We definitely bonded and had good time together. And in fact, I tried to start a podcast many years ago, like right when he returned from Japan, and he was the. The first episode I ever Recorded was with him and Matt Real after a Bay island bonsai show in like a trailer. And that podcast was called Bonsai and a Beer, which I thought was a great name. Although then shortly after I started getting headaches like every time I would drink beer. And so I was like, maybe I should stop, stop drinking so much. And after that, pretty much quit drinking. Like I'll still drink maybe, maybe four times a year is about what I give myself. But had to change the name there. So. Yeah, but Tyler, such, such a great guy and I mean his teacher is absolutely a legend in the bonsai world. Shinji Suzuki. Have you, have you been to Shinji's garden before? [00:50:57] Speaker A: I haven't been to Nagano yet. When I spent this, this month in Japan, it was down in the south of Japan on Shikoku island, which is Takamatsu is the kind of home of black pine growing for Japan. So that's where I spent the majority of it. And then I did this kind of four day sprint up through Osaka, hung out with Michael McTeague for an evening, went to Kyoto, saw Mr. Seiji Morimai and the Daitoku Ji collection there, went over to Tokoname, got just an ungodly amount of pots, and then went back to Takamatsu and even like it was a three, four day sprint through these kind of cities. And at the fourth day I was like, I just want to get back to Takamatsu so I can begin working on trees again. When I get into that kind of rhythm of working on trees all day, all the time, it really feels like that the notion of ikigai, this kind of Japanese idea of finding your purpose that also pays, that's good for you, that's good for the world. I just love bonsai. And that was that month in Takamatsu kind of affirmed that can I work 12 plus hours a day on trees doing bonsai related things. And at the month I was, I was crushed to go home. Like just, you know, love working on trees all day. [00:52:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Ah, I love, love to hear that you were crushed to go home and respect it heavily in terms of just wanting to build your knowledge of being able to work on trees and just the desire to work on trees. I know personally I've only been to Japan one time and I went to Ichi and I just wanted to work on trees. That was my main thing. I mean, of course I want to see the Kokufu, I want to see the GAFU 10, I want to see all these major shows and travel around, see different Nurseries. But like my main objective the first time was I just want to get my hands on trees and learn from the source. So I respect that very much. [00:53:04] Speaker A: So, so what? Okay. In Takamatsu there's many growers and this, this kind of speaks to something that we need here in the US Most of them are farmers. They grow trunks, they grow interesting material that other people will go on to refine. The exception to that, and there's a few, but the real exception to that is Koji Hiramatsu and his fourth gener, fourth generation nursery Shunsho. And he went to the Takamatsu kind of provincial government and said, hey look, all of the gardens are starting to close. Where we're basically just, you know, the Japanese bonsai market is receding. So they had all of these kind of farms are starting to shut down. So he was the brainchild of let's do two things. Let's have a marketplace that all of the different growers can bring their material to. So it's a one stop shop for the tourists that want to buy stuff, pots, rocks. You know, the Chinese can squirrely import stuff to China. So let's have this one stop shop and then let's have a schoolhouse. So he had on his family's 150-year-old property, he had in collaboration with the local government built a schoolhouse that has dorm rooms, a common area connected to a studio. And it basically begins with. He gives you a very simple piece of material. He says wire this and depending on how you wire that material and the next one you get more and more complicated material. And so this kind of bonsai resort, if you will, of it all being right there, I had tremendous fun with. I hit it off immensely with Mr. Hiramatsu's apprentice Toshi. They're great guys and I. If you want to spend some time in Japan, you're I looking for a place. This is my recommendation is bonsai no Takumi T A K U M I. You can go ahead and Google it. You can get in contact with them and. And basically spend American visa in Japan can last for three months before you have to go somewhere else and you can come back for another three months. So I did a month. You can do shorter. I there was a guy from Belarus that came from a for a day and I was there for a month. While I was there, there was a man who had just retired from his salaryman job and he'd done bonsai for a week at his home in Gifu and said to hell with this. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm gonna go down to the schoolhouse. So his name was Tomo, and Tomo san in his 50s, right. But had spent time in the US and New Zealand. So his English, Mr. Hiramatsu can, can speak English. Tomo's English is slightly better. So he became kind of my intermediary step when I had to speak with toshi or with Mr. Hiramatsu. And he defu is in Nagano prefecture. So it's right near I chien and in drivable distance to obuse, where Mr. Suzuki's place is. So because we had all bonded over that kind of month of being together, we had made the plan, this is in May of 24, that we would meet again in the fall of 25 and help Mr. Hiramatsu get ready for Taikon 10. So this was another one of those things when I was negotiating my apprenticeship with Tyler. Hey, I made this promise to these Japanese men that I would come back in the fall. Do you have any problem with that? And he said, no, you should get that highest level show experience. So again, Tyler's support of my goals. I couldn't be more appreciative to my boss for this. And so in those kind of plans, there's the notion that I'll spend a day with Tomo san and his wife in Gifu and we'll go see ICN and Mr. Suzuki's place in Obuse. So haven't been yet, that whole long winded story. Just to say, hopefully in the coming year I'll get to see both of those legendary gardens. And I'm so excited. [00:57:45] Speaker B: Ah, that's so rad. What an opportunity there. That's fantastic. And good for Tyler for being cool with that because I think that is just a incredible experience and opportunity that you're gonna get there. So Mr. Koji Hiromatsu, he has a bonsai school. That's basically what I'm hearing. And anyone can sign up. What do you know? Like, is there a weekly fee or a monthly fee or, or. [00:58:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's, it's broke down exactly as you said it. There's a daily fee, weekly fee or bi monthly fee. And as you can imagine, the longer you stay, kind of, they'll bring the price down a little bit. But this was immensely frustrating for me as someone that was. Did not have a ton of disposable income. How do I get better? Bjorn was the guy that was hosting intensives on the east coast. Bjorn left. Ryan wasn't doing intensives. If I Go to Boone's. You know, that's another thousand dollars in lodging that I'm going to have to also pay for. I can't get better at bonsai under these kind of constraints. It cost me twelve hundred dollars flight and fifteen hundred dollars for that one month that I spent in Takamatsu. I think the price has increased a little since, but that's, that's what you're going to spend for a four day intensive in the US is, is roughly that. And I was there for a month, wire included, you know, lodging included, one meal a day included in that. And then every evening Toshi would drive me over to the grocery store to get, you know, dinner. And then meals are a fifth of the price that they are in the U.S. so it was this weird. I did the boy math of I'm saving money by going to Japan to do an intensive. And so if you have an interest in spending time in the country, an interest in getting into bonsai that is like far and away. Like I couldn't recommend it enough. They're absolute, just lovely, lovely people down in Takamatsu. They're so excited to host so that the Bonsai Space Club podcast is how I do some of my Japanese language learning. It's you know, a group of these deshis that all live down there that get together and chat and you know, half the time I'm like, I have no idea the context of what we're talking about, but I'm forcing myself to listen to the Japanese completely. Just left talking with Mr. Hiramatsu's two year old grandson. You know, you get a minor in Japanese in the US and that's the kind of level it leaves you at, is like you can communicate with a two year old. Pretty. All right. [01:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah. What do you know about Koji Hiromatsu? I don't know a whole lot about him other than he has a pretty badass Instagram page. Is he a shogun specialist? [01:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So if you had to kind of categorize him under specializations, of course, black pine as a. You know, he has trees in the ground there that his grandfather planted. So he has grown up intimately familiar with black pine production. And then on top of that he is very, very skilled in shohin creation, whether that is from chimpaku or black pine. There's some white pine but. But not too terribly much. He's a, he is one of the kind of like we talked about rare growers that has also put trees into kokufu and taikon10. And then he's a judge at Gafuten, the big Shohin show. So it's considered. There's that kind of Kunio, Kobayashi Kimura generation that are in their 80s. There's maybe Seiji Morimai is in his 60s, 70s and Koji is in his 50s, I believe. Yeah, his mid-50s. Taught himself English after, after kind of primary school. So he's great to communicate. He smokes too damn much like a. [01:02:01] Speaker B: Lot of them do. [01:02:02] Speaker A: Right, right, right. And yeah, so then he, he throws a pack of Japanese seven Stars at me. It's like I don't, I don't smoke cigarettes. And then it just kind of sat there and then they're out there smoking. I was like, I guess I do smoke cigarettes now. Just completely folded to the, the Japanese peer pressure of it and was like I, I at the time was, was teaching Jiu Jitsu three times a week at a 6:30am class and just every time I'm smoking one at the end of a good day of bonsai thinking like I am going to pay for this when I get back to training. And that first day I came back to training Jeremiah, I set the room on fire. It didn't do anything. Japanese cigarettes don't count. They don't count. My cardio was fine. I torched the boys. Japanese cigarettes don't count. Moral of the story. I'm here to report back. But yeah, like he's a riot. I couldn't say enough good things about Mr. Hiramatsu. He's a special guy. [01:03:05] Speaker B: I love to hear that he is taking things from seed all the way to show and the process of learning how to grow and then refine after that, create branches, make trees. I think we need that a whole lot more within the United States. Did you. [01:03:22] Speaker A: It kind of drives crazy like especially with pines. Like, like I had mentioned, you know, I, I live in basically the same climate as Shikoku Island. Humid mild winters. This is where black pines thrive. But you can see down from Vietnamese growers in Florida, very high level pines. Um, I, I've actually seen on your Instagram you kind of teasing the Facebook auctions because they can just get ridiculous. The kind of pre bonsai market is just generally like a bit of a nightmare. So I think that this getting of more pre, good pre bonsai material is essential for getting better American bonsai. Because it seems right now that when you get into this thing, Nobody should spend $500 on their first, you know, in years of their first bonsai. That's, it's just too much unless you have that kind of disposable income where 500 is five bucks to you, then God bless. But as more talented growers come out and then there's the problem of geographic problems of yeah, there might be great growers out in Oregon, but it now doubles the price to get it to be in Carolina. So in a kind of like 30 year forecast for bonsai in the U.S. i know our friend Julian Tsai has talked about this kind of, to paraphrase him, we need more bonsai farmers. We need more of these guys that are going to grow a lot of quality pre bonsai material. I think someone that is doing that in an excellent way is Eric Weigert down in Weigert's Bonsai in Florida. That's still in a climate that could have black pine. He has import facilities as well. So that kind of already ready for mass production scale to have black pine is something I would love to see. I would love to see more young growers or young bonsai enthusiasts, not aged but in young and bonsai getting into pines. We call it the king. But then it's like, yeah, nobody gets to enjoy the king unless you're starting from very, very young material. And your attrition rate is just going to be atrocious for every one. Jonas, who has been able to do that and make a career out of it, how many just hundreds or thousands attempted and never got out of kind of the starting gate of pine development? [01:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, we absolutely need more bonsai farmers. I like the way that you phrase that and Julian phrase that as well, 100%. [01:06:18] Speaker A: I think this is kind of what, what Aaron was talking about where it's, we're in a positive trend right now where this greater specialization within an already niche field is indicative that we're kind of headed in the right direction of interest. Interest is growing enough that we can start to have these specialists as a professional developing trunks. You need to do a vast number of trees, making big cuts, ground growing, turning and burning, selling raw material at an affordable price. And there's so much bad material in the entry market, the less wealthy never get to afford some of those species. So in the kind of panopticon of bonsai professionals, this the person that is growing the trunks is very rarely the person to bring it to the highest level of refinement. So with this increasing specialization, we'll actually be able to do that. Instead of you have one guy that by kind of nature of his, his experience has to be the one to bring it from seed to show you're just never going to get affordable material being the, being a sole person to do it. Are you familiar with Mark Comstock by chance? [01:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've seen the black pine that he grows with the seedling cutting technique. [01:07:37] Speaker A: This dude is a wizard. I mean he's really doing it the right way up in Connecticut. And the only gripe I have as a, as a lower income individual is that they're, they're quite expensive. You know, a few year old perfect material, but it's still, you know, for one of his like six year old starters, I would pay the same amount that I did for a 25 year old, 30 year old trident maple. I mean I got at auction. So yeah, that's, that's a tough swallow. [01:08:09] Speaker B: So are you growing yourself from seed? So, yeah, love to hear it. [01:08:16] Speaker A: So the North Carolina Forestry department has a lot of natives that they will sell kind of huge batches of seedlings at like very affordable prices to include Virginia pine. Virginia pine has become kind of my pet project. It's often compared to red pine by a lot of professionals because it has kind of more of a quote unquote free form growing habit that is associated with red pine than the kind of beefiness of black. But the needles naturally are 2 to 3 inches and is incredibly bendy. So I have over 50 seedlings at this point, 2 to 3 years old of Virginia pine that I'm using Eric Schrader's black pine kind of growing shohin black pine instructional that he released. Great instructional. Shout out Eric for that. It's at an affordable price. So that's kind of my, my template in which I'm growing those Virginia pines. Just modeling it after black pine. It's a multi flush species and, and we'll see what, what happens with that. So cool. Yeah. The rest of my ground going is in its infant stages. A lot of stuff that maybe Bill V used to offer, but it's more kind of hard to come by. Cato mulberry is one of them. And then. Are you familiar with the name Joe Noga? [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I know mostly as a photographer, but I've seen he has some pretty incredible trees in his collection as well. [01:09:53] Speaker A: He's the man. So Joe, for those that aren't familiar with the name, was he is a retired Rochester Institute of Technology photography professor. So Rochester, if that's ringing a bell, that means he was one of Bill's students. So he's known Bill for, you know, older than both of us combined, something like that. And in that relationship has Been the photographer for the national show since its inception, and he's also the photographer of the winter Silhouette national show that we have here in North Carolina. Outside of his kind of photography mastery, Bill named a unique cultivar of crabapple after Joe Noga crab, and it's kind of claimed to see it. Oh, you have one? [01:10:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:10:44] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. Yeah, yeah, That's. So Noga crab is named after our beloved Joe Noga. And so I have a bunch of seedlings of that. Just as a kind of North American east coast native, I have connection to its namesake, and hopefully we'll kind of. Whatever. I have maybe 20 cuttings of that, you know, and maybe hopefully by the end of the apprenticeship, that's 200. And I'm. And I'm turning and burning and pumping those out. We'll see. [01:11:13] Speaker B: Fantastic. Love to hear it. Hey, I am so sorry. Do you mind if we take a quick break? [01:11:20] Speaker A: All right. [01:11:20] Speaker B: You still there? [01:11:22] Speaker A: Yes, sir. Cracking a crispy beverage. [01:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I got a bubbly or a sparkling water. Trying to make sure I watch those calories and not get too fat. [01:11:37] Speaker A: Did you punish yourself over the Christmas season, or did you stay pretty disciplined? [01:11:43] Speaker B: I went a little hard in the paint, I would say. [01:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:49] Speaker A: What about you, man? [01:11:51] Speaker B: I. [01:11:52] Speaker A: With. With my move, plus the drive, plus Christmas, it's not been good for the kid. Yeah, Just so much processed garbage. So I. I'm really looking forward to totally unpacking my kitchen and starting to make somewhat healthy meals, but I don't know. I've been blessed with skinny man genetics, where it doesn't really hurt too bad in the aesthetics, but. Yeah, I don't. Definitely don't want to make a habit out of how much candy I've been eating. [01:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You look. Look super lean. I don't know if that's maybe because you do jiu jitsu so often or. [01:12:35] Speaker A: What the deal is I am so. I guess paranoid is the right word. Like, I am. You know, I'm close to black belt at this point. Within a couple and, you know, another couple years, keep training, and it's there. Just keep showing up. That's what they always say. But I'm working a manual labor job now, so, like the broken ribs and torn knees that I've had from training in the past, that's not cool when you have a manual labor job, for sure. I am, like, going to be very conscientious with how I'm training, who I'm training with, and I guess the frequency of training as well. You know, it does it puts some wear and tear on your body. I'm more in the camp of Hunter S. Thompson's. My body is not a temple, it's a playground. But even still, you know, I want to show my chosen profession the due respect that it deserves. And that means not having a sore back when it's time to lift trees. [01:13:44] Speaker B: Totally. [01:13:44] Speaker A: So I'm, I'm trying to, to kind of suss out an equilibrium there with my Jiu Jitsu training. Because that, I mean to be a black belt and a bonsai professional, I really, it's like 18 year old me would be very proud of me. So I would like to see that then. [01:14:02] Speaker B: Oh, you gotta, you gotta get there. You can't stop, right? Like no one. Yeah. So yeah, I feel like with, with Jiu jitsu you really gotta fight that ego, you know, like the ego wants you to go hard against everybody and like take on the super young dudes that's like, has a wrestling background who just is super spazzy. But I feel like you just gotta, you gotta improve your skill, but fight your ego and just train really smart and not, not care if you're tapping, you know, like just have fun with it and not, not take it too serious. And I feel like when I train like that I usually, my skill develops faster anyways. But I always have to battle that ego because the, the like, you know, the ego side of me wants to go out there and just battle everybody and use strength and this and that. But I feel like I need to. [01:15:04] Speaker A: Battle the ego that is being a man in your 30s. I think in great summation, definitely that and there's the ego and I'm, I had another point, but then I was like listening to your thoughts on ego and I think you're spot on with that. Yeah. Anyways, it's gone. [01:15:32] Speaker B: Cool. [01:15:32] Speaker A: Cool. [01:15:33] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, we are back and wanted to jump back into a couple things, so I definitely wanted to talk more about Jonoga. But then I, I was curious, just kind of circling back to your time in Japan. Do you think that Mr. Koji would be a good person to learn field growing and ground growing from? And was that something that he focused on with you? [01:16:04] Speaker A: Yes and no. I think, you know, it has to be the right time for that work. I had through my own kind of constraints of when I could go. Not gone at a real opportune time for a lot of that work. But my friend Tomo that we had been talking about, he had gotten there a couple weeks earlier than I had and he had done some of that propagation work. So he's easy to commute, Mr. Hiramatsu, or he insists on being called Koji. And it's just maybe from my military background, I'm so reticent to get on a first name basis with this Japanese master. So I said Mr. Hiramatsu and he's like, please, Koji. I'm like, maybe next time. But, you know. [01:16:47] Speaker B: Did he speak English to you? Majority of the time, yeah. Nice. [01:16:51] Speaker A: Mostly sweet, you know. And then with the Japanese, I could understand when they were talking about me. I can understand like kind of general context, but that's basically it. I, you know, I could, I could suss out if what they were saying about me was generally positive or negative. But for the most part, like his strength in English is enough to communicate, it's enough that he can travel Europe and do demos. He'll be one of the main demonstrators at the Trophy next year in Europe. And he does a lot of his kind of international work in Europe and that's why we don't see him much stateside. But I am doing my absolute best to coordinate three of the North Carolina clubs and try and get him and also Michael McTeague to come to North Carolina within the next couple years and spread that traditional Japanese high level knowledge. Because there's, you know, always room for that. Did that answer that question? But you can learn the propagation if you go at the right time and you, you know, and you ask him. But other than in his, in his consideration, the hardest thing in Bonsai to master is proper wiring and the, the compactness that he gets his shohin trees to. It kind of boggles the mind, especially if you've never seen really high level shohin conifers. I think I have it on my Instagram of some zoomed in photos of like, you know, a shohin tree is less than 8 inches from apex to base, roughly. And I'm talking, I think there was like double digit guy wires on a tree that small plus wire plus, you know, wiring out all the tips of a shinpaku. So the level of detail to get a high level juniper shohin for him. He, you know, being the humble man that he is, will say, I've been doing this for 300 days a year for 30 years, and I don't think I'm a master yet. So it's like that. Those are the kind of teachers that I love to be around. The constant learner, Zen mind, beginner's mind, always looking to learn. He's receptive in that way. Always trying to get better. I couldn't respect more from a practitioner that's been doing it, you know, his whole adult life. [01:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah. What a great viewpoint to be doing it for 300 days a year and not necessarily think that you are a master. I like that philosophy. I feel like you always need to be a student of the game no matter what level you are. That's, that's just my personal opinion. [01:19:53] Speaker A: It was, it was affirming to hear it from him. I think there's maybe a, maybe less now, but there's definitely like a notion that the Japanese masters have some sort of secret sauce of. They just have the Japanese feel and Americans don't and that's why we'll never have it as good a bonsai or something. It's. I don't know how much I buy into that. It's really. He has been doing the same style, the same kind of progression towards bonsai perfection day in, day out, hours and hours and hours for 30 plus years. And that's. You don't get there without that kind of mentality of the constant pushing for excellence. So those are the kind of mentors I look for. So in finding that in him was like a affirming, oh, I'm in the right place with the right people kind of feeling incredible. [01:20:55] Speaker B: Very nice. Love it. So, yeah, I guess wanted to ask you a little bit more about Joe Noga as well. I believe I saw that you recently helped him or assisted in some photography, is that correct? [01:21:12] Speaker A: I can't claim that. So for the winter silhouette show, it's done in this beautiful multi storied marble room that has multiple levels and then you can look down over the edges and see the ground floor. So kind of imagine this, I guess atrium. I'm not an architect, don't quote me, but the kind of ground level is where the trees are displayed and the vendors are. And then Joe has this room up on the second floor where he has his whole setup and he has runners that are going to take trees off display and then he brings them up the elevator and does those photos. So I've, I've assisted him in doing that kind of runner and moving the trees. And I also had the opportunity to sit down with him and have him hold my hand through. All right, this is bonsai photography. This is what an ISO is. This is shutter speed. These are the kind of lenses that you'd like to look for. But I am uber, uber white belt in my kind of photography. I have Joe as a resource that I can send him photos and he'll give me kind of feedback of, yep, you still suck work on this. But at this moment, it's not a kind of ongoing thing. It's more just my general adoration for him and his. His work over the years. [01:22:33] Speaker B: Very nice. Yeah, I feel like his. His photography skills are second to none and would love to learn more myself. I'm definitely a white belt when it comes to photography, bonsai photography. I did get a really cool backdrop recently that, like, you can pull down and it goes back up, which is super nice. But other than that, I. I would just. I'm always on the hunt for more tips and suggestions in terms of taking good bonsai photos. [01:23:05] Speaker A: So when I. When I have some more solid evidence, I'll be sure to come back and. And report back what I've learned. [01:23:14] Speaker B: Nice. Sounds good. [01:23:16] Speaker A: For now. I guess the kind of last sentiment on Joe is, you know, he started doing digital camera work in the early 90s. Wow. Right? Right. Wow. I mean, holy shit. Wow. That was, I mean, what, 15 years before they were commercially available in any sort of kind of commonality. So he himself, even though he is, I think he's an octogenarian at this point. I think he's 81, 82 years old. Has been at that forefront, cutting edge of photography technology for now, 30 plus years. So it's. And much like jiu jitsu, it's awesome when you have people come into this thing that you love already with other experience of their professional lives, and it helps to enrich this other thing that you guys are doing together. I'm thinking of like, you know, there's nothing more than I love than a physical therapist that does jiu jitsu because they understand my knees for sure. For. For bonsai, it's like to have a great photographer with you is a godsend because how. How else to kind of communicate to the world this love affair we have with the tiny trees other than to photograph them proficiently? [01:24:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well said. Well said. [01:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah, man. And on a kind of a last note with Takamatsu, one of the kind of exciting, fascinating conversations that I had with them there in May, I was told with great enthusiasm, not by Mr. Hiramatsu, but by others, that I was there with that. There's conviction that the government of Japan and our Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, aphis, is working together to allow for a bonsai exemption to the black pine ban that affects most of East Asia. The ban in two ways. It prevents Takamatsu's storied pine fields from being Imported to the US we were talking about like a guy like Eric Weigert and his ability to import if they lifted that ban. So that it was just like azaleas and anything else that can legally be imported where they need a two year quarantine and then they can be sold. This may be another way in which we can kind of raise the level of bonsai in the US is by having a ton of bonsai material that has been grown in a skilled way for years just suddenly flood the market. Maybe that's, you know, they're kind of overstating their position and the likelihood in which that ban gets lifted. But never say never, you know. So I'm hopeful to see what, what becomes of that. There's so. I mean I love those like fork bark black pines, like Nishiki's horticosa. They look like Godzilla. They're so cool. And there are nurseries in Takamatsu that, that's what they do. So just bench after bench of cork bark nishikis. So the ability to import a lot of those is like I'm drooling, please when I'll be there first. So I got my fingers crossed for that one. [01:26:45] Speaker B: Hopefully they got it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know one thing I'm, I'm not, I'm really unfamiliar with a lot of the way that the importation of bonsai, what the process looks like. It seems like azaleas, satsuki can be imported fairly easily. Like at least I, I see them frequently. Or like the, the bonsai that Eric imports out in Florida. Do you, do you know, do those have the two year quarantine? Like does everything have a two year quarantine or is it only certain species? [01:27:22] Speaker A: So it depends on the species. And I guess I should back up here. I mentioned us APHIS agency. This was the federal agency that I was working as a desk job before I quit to begin apprenticeship. So I had a little bit of inside ball on this and ability to kind of navigate through the mire of bureaucratic governmental websites to get a little bit better understanding of this. [01:27:46] Speaker B: Wait, so sorry, you. You worked for aphis? [01:27:49] Speaker A: I did. I did, yeah. [01:27:50] Speaker B: So okay, interesting. [01:27:52] Speaker A: When you have a, when you have a cleared or a job with a clearance, when you have a cleared job and then you stop using it, what that kind of sets you up for is sensitive administrative work that may not necessarily have a clearance attached to it. So this is. I found myself working a mostly work from home desk job that I was a bit. I had an ability to, you know, get away from my desk for five minutes, go check trees and whatever. So that was really the appeal of it. It just so happened. Said this was the agency that deals with the importing. It wasn't necessarily something that I was actually involved in, but having access to APHIS Intranet and other things made it easier for me to suss out what does this importation thing look like. And so from my memory of it, like when Eric imports the premas from Taiwan, that's because there are USDA approved facilities in Taiwan that they've gone through the quarantine there and then they're shipped over in almost like shrink wrap around the root balls so that they don't dry out in shipment and they send them when they're dormant. So I think that that's what happens with the azaleas too is that there are quarantine facilities on the Japanese side, but then there are also individuals like what's his, what's his name? Doug Paul that has a large private collection up in Pennsylvania. I know he has a quarantine facility. I know the great pot seller Matt Awinga also has a quarantine facility. He has a kind of long tied history to Japan and has set that up for himself to begin importing. So it's a basically separate greenhouse and it can't be just on the kind of like a dirt floor. And I think it needs to be on a concrete pad. And there's certain kind of provisions of you need two layers of doors, the screens need to be so many microns wide. It has to be subject to whatever, whenever USDA inspections can just show up and make sure that you're following the rules of it. So there's a bit of a kind of bureaucratic load that comes into taking on a quarantine facility which you know is pretty onerous for a niche business that doesn't have a huge margin in it anyways. [01:30:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, I've also heard and some, some potential rumors of like. I feel like I've seen a lot of importation pop up more recently. And one thing that I heard was that it was through a research permit, through a university. I don't know if you've heard any of that, anything like that, but that was something that I heard recently. I'm not sure the accuracy or if that is true or valid or anything like that. That just a rumor that I heard. [01:30:59] Speaker A: And I had a, I had a client. So I was doing this little kind of rent a Deshi thing while I was working in the Triangle where I had had this Japan experience. You know, if you have grunt work around your garden, hire me for whatever I think it was 35 bucks an hour, I'll come, you know, pull your weeds and do whatever. One of these clients had wanted some help doing some repotting, and he busts out this great little exposed root prema. And I asked him where he got it, and he says, Indonesia. And I'm like, did they. They do a quarantine for it? And he's like, I have no idea. So there's. There's one, loopholes exist. Two, there are unscrupulous sellers that will, you know, ship product overseas without that importation, and then they'll just kind of play the numbers, play the odds of what is the chance that this is going to get stopped by the USDA's importation guys. And it's, it's honestly like there's so much globalization, import, export that happens at these facilities that things get through the cracks all the time. So there are plenty of trees in the US that maybe they didn't follow the kind of classical importation, but that find them, find their, find their way here, so to speak. Catch my drift? [01:32:16] Speaker B: Yep. Makes sense. Got it. [01:32:19] Speaker A: If your real baller money is to like, get one and then put it on a private plane and fly it over. Oh, if you've done that, holler at me. I want to, I want to shake your hand. [01:32:30] Speaker B: Interesting. Interesting. Cool. Very interesting info. Appreciate it. You know, I, I wanted to chat a bit about your apprenticeship still, if that's cool with you. [01:32:43] Speaker A: By all means. [01:32:44] Speaker B: I guess so. So you tech. So you've. I, I saw on your Instagram you doing some type of like assisting Tyler in a demo or something like that, but you technically haven't started officially yet. You've just done some work with them. Is that, that's what's going on? [01:33:01] Speaker A: So, you know, from the, the kind of handshake agreement to January 1st has been this great twiddling of my thumbs moment for me of I cannot wait to start my apprenticeship. So there were a couple opportunities to do apprentice things, including this kind of first public appearance was the Winter Silhouette. So although Tyler and I have known and close to and people close to us have known for a few months, that Winter Silhouette silhouette show in Kannapolis was my first public appearance. We haven't really dived into this. So I'll say this now. The Winter Silhouette show, it's a national show that's held in Kannapolis, North Carolina, right outside of Charlotte, every year roughly 70 trees are shown. There's just as many vendors. Top talent comes from all over the Midwest and the east coast. Bill Vallovanis comes usually every year. He couldn't come this year, unfortunately, but Sergio Kwan was there. Adair Martin brought out a just knock out white pine. When Bjorn was living in Tennessee, he often had many clients come to the Kannapolis show. And Tyler has now become kind of the heir apparent to the Southeast scene now that Bjorn has left entirely. So Dogwood Client trees won almost every major category in the show this year. On top of that, Tyler was one of the demonstrators. We had Rodney Clemens and Mark Comstock. I think Mark Arpeg also did one. So Tyler brought out a shore pine that was collected off Vancouver Island. And this is one of the best kind of native species for bonsai. Shore pine has short needles. Interesting deadwood. Really, really cool. Trees. [01:34:52] Speaker B: Love sharp pine. [01:34:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I love them. His Tyler's philosophy on this, knowing he's going to be able to keep coming back to the winter silhouette show, is that he likes to bring trees that the crowds have seen before that he's brought before so that he can show a multi year development of bringing a piece into real refinement instead of total raw stock. Badass styling. Da, da. Instant bonsai. Because I know for me, and so I'm sure for you, having been in this longer, you see a lot of those and then you see the kind of health repercussions afterwards and it can oftentimes not end well. So he had brought out this short pine that had been styled once, I think two years ago. And that was the opportunity to hey, this is Jacob, my new apprentice. He's going to be doing some wiring. I'm going to be talking about the tree. And so he was in front of the crowd doing the crowd work and kind of explaining the path there. And then I was behind the table during the wiring. Now it man. So my, my grandfather passed away a couple years ago and I inherited his Black Hills Gold ring. Black Hills Gold is kind of a special unique kind of gold. It has a special design on it. Anyways, Tyler hits me up maybe a half an hour before we're about to start this demo. He says, hey, here's the keys to the truck. Go out, get the tree, set us up, and then we'll begin. Okay, boss. I go get the tree. Of course he's parked a million miles away. I'm carrying it into the building. I shake my hands out, I bring it in. We begin the demo. I bring my hands up and into the tree. And I look at my finger, and I'm like, oh, my God. My grandfather's gold ring is not on my hand. [01:36:55] Speaker B: Oh, no. [01:36:56] Speaker A: And then there's 100 people in front of me. So I. I see in the kind of corner of the room, Dr. Steve Zyzel is the. The organizer of the show. And as Tyler, I set my wire down. I kind of go out from behind Tyler, I grab Dr. Steve, I say, hey, Steve, I'm. I've lost a gold ring between here and Tyler's truck. I got to go back. So I've gone off stage for whatever, 10 seconds, come back, and just have to lock back in, you know. So you want to be a professional. This is the moment to, you know, I can't go look for a ring. This is the time to work. So we do the two hours of wiring, and then I kind of excuse myself and go off and look in the bushes. They hadn't found it. Hell, man, this is heartbreaking. I go. I go get some lunch to try and kind of settle my nerves about it and prepare to tell my mom and Tyler. Tyler's a big guy compared to me. I'm 5 11, 160 ish. And so he towers over me, and so I see. I get a picture message of his big bear paw hand with my, at that time, pinky ring. And he doesn't even have it past the first joint of his pinky. In between dropping the tree off at the demo stand and beginning the demo, I had gone into one of our merch boxes to get a shirt for Chris Baker, the curator at the Chicago Museum. And in that. Going into the box, it had slipped off. Tyler had gone into the same box while I was gone to do another sale. And it had plopped into his hand, like, what the hell? All right, hey, fine, you know, like, I'm not gonna question it. Great. I'm not wearing that damn ring until I get it resized so it doesn't slip off again. But, you know, my first kind of coming out party, so to speak, this is my first moment in the kind of bonsai spotlight, and I have a personal crisis in front of everyone and trying to just keep it together. [01:38:59] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. [01:39:04] Speaker A: But it was just like a. Oh, of course this would happen to me. No, no, no. This is. This is normal. This is. Yeah. All right. Something was going. It was bound to happen. And how do we. How do we react to circumstances is what defines us to be a professional. [01:39:22] Speaker B: So you got the ring. All is good, though. [01:39:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I got the ring. All's good. [01:39:27] Speaker B: Glad to hear. Glad to hear. [01:39:29] Speaker A: That was my kind of first experience as, as the Apprentice. But the kind of deshi. Work. Apprentice work of doing grunt things begins on the first. Tyler has told me, quite frankly, hey, man, there's a couple bowl games that are happening on January 1st, so I'm going to task you. I'm going to be watching football, which is fine by me, as not a football head like that gives me that moment to set up my desk, set up my workstation, and kind of get all my tools dialed in, because then the real work starts on the second. And I'm just. I'm so stoked, so thrilled. I figured how we could rock this, if you're interested in, is this. We have this kind of launch point, moment of apprenticeship that we're talking about. And maybe in a few years, whatever, two, three year mark, we'll check back in and do another one of these bad boys and see what the progression has been. And maybe I feel differently about some things. Maybe I feel more strongly and kind of see where the bonsai landscape puts us here in another few years. [01:40:38] Speaker B: Hell yeah. Love it. Love that idea. That'd be fantastic. Hey, would you tell me. And I'm not even sure if you've. You've spent a lot of time there yet, but what is Tyler's setup look like? [01:40:52] Speaker A: Yes, I have mentioned this just in passing earlier. What his family did was purchase a large plot of land that used to be a horse farm. So you can imagine a large fenced off area that has been cleared for trees. Then you would have what used to be the horse barn that Tyler brought down to the studs over the last couple years, and then really just rebuilt it from bonsai scratch. So there's a kind of back room, we have a pot room, and then there's the main studio room. One hoop house. Kind of on my list of apprentice to do's is we'll be building a second hoop house and then a more formal display area of finished trees up on, you know, what do they call those? Monkey poles. And then we're gonna begin to do some in ground growing as well. But these are all projects that will begin. Obviously we have. I mean, the, The. The hoop house that is there now is cram packed full of trees for the winter. And then there's tons of stuff that are out below the benches that he's already built. But this moment of me stepping into apprenticeship, it's not like stepping into Mr. Suzuki's garden or Mr. Kimura's garden where it's already been established as a bonsai nursery for decades. And so it's entirely esthetically beautiful. We have the bones of just a really kind of special place. Tyler's eye for the esthetics of the garden I think are exceptional. And the kind of plan that he walked me through for building out this garden I'm so excited to be a part of. And for me as someone that is then, now in the future planning to build my own garden, this is my opportunity to have a, a hands on lessons learned of hey, I like, I like the, the, you know, whatever gravel that Tyler used, but I don't like the color. I think I, I would rather go with a more red stone for my garden. Whatever. I know those lessons learned and so I will be doing my absolute best to be a very astute and keen observer of the kind of garden build out process. But we have gotten to a point now where the garden is in 2025 beginning to host intensives, which is, you know, really exciting. We really look forward to seeing a bunch of friendly faces from the shows and from all around the country. Especially now that as near as I can tell, we will be hosting the only intensives within a thousand miles. I think they, you know. Yeah, yeah. So Morrow hosts a intensive course through Bonsai west up near Boston. I don't think Su Thin does intensives. And so then the next closest, again I could be wrong, but the next closest high level intensives one could attend are in Denver with Todd. So if you are on the east coast, you are looking to improve your bonsai game. Come through dogwood studiosnc.com services. We have slots still available. January, February, March. April is sold out. June, July, August. Actually there's two in August still available. October is sold out. November only has one spot left and those are our intensives for the year. We're offering a ton this first year at a reduced price, no less. So it's not only the only kind of game in town for east of the Mississippi, it's also the most affordable intensives you can find in the country. So kind of leaving it on this note. We really hope to see you guys out there. We'll have a great time doing our intensives. One of the kind of permissions that Tyler gave me is I brought my Traeger smoker to the Garden. North Carolinians love their barbecue. We'll be doing smoked. If you like chicken, we'll be doing some smoked chicken. If you want brisket, we'll do the brisket ribs, pulled pork, but that's. Your meals will be provided in part by yours truly at the Garden. [01:45:28] Speaker B: Oh, that's fantastic. Taking request meet requests. I love it. Nice. Yeah. What a great opportunity. I'm so, so glad to hear that he is doing those intensives. I know personally, I did the intensive series through Boone and it was just a great opportunity. Great way for me to build a foundation of bonsai knowledge. And I think. I don't think there could be a more fun teacher with you and Tyler being able to hang out with you guys. I think that would be super fun as well and just a great opportunity to learn a whole lot. So I'm glad to hear that he's doing that and it sounds like there's a real need in that area to have someone hosting those, so that's fantastic. [01:46:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I'm. I carry that, I think, with a. With a bit of pride of belonging to the Garden as Tyler's apprentice as he begins to be the. Be the new face of. Of East Coast Bonsai. It's a privilege that I don't take lightly and am going to put forth my wholeheartedness. We had spoken at the beginning of the conversation about my friendship with Tatsutoshi. He was the first to really introduce the. The shokunin mindset to me. Shokunin being the kind of Japanese idea of constant improvement, looking to better oneself, you know, 1% better every day. This is something we talk about again in jiu jitsu as well. And then that's how I will attempt to approach my apprenticeship, is just looking to give it, you know, my best and improve a little bit every day. [01:47:24] Speaker B: Fantastic, man. Awesome. Well, were there any other topics that you. That you wanted to chat about? I think I marked the majority off on my list. [01:47:39] Speaker A: As did I. Yeah, I'm gonna shout it out again. East coast bonsai enthusiasts, if you've got callery pear, Oriental bittersweet wisteria, choking out the woods near your house, make bonsai out of it. Tag me. I want to see them at Dogwood Apprentice for me. [01:47:58] Speaker B: Tag me as well. [01:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, of course. I want to see Jeremiah Lee. We want to see cool native deciduous push to a high level. And I think that we will see it within our lifetimes. [01:48:13] Speaker B: So cool. Well, hey, Jacob, it's been fantastic getting to chat with you. I'm very impressed in speaking with you. I feel like you should have a bonsai podcast and maybe that's something you can do in the future. I would love to hear you and Tyler Do Something YouTube videos or some type of podcast. But yeah, And I have the utmost respect for you just leaving your career and jumping into a bonsai apprenticeship, following your passion. I think that's the right thing to do. I always think you should bet on yourself, and that's what I'm seeing you doing right now. So I'm so stoked for you, man, and can't wait to follow along on your bonsai journey. [01:48:55] Speaker A: I really appreciate it, man. Yeah. So I guess in this last closeout, I'm doing a little bit more bio stuff. I guess so. When I went back for my undergrad, I did philosophy and I emphasized in kind of Eastern thought. Tyler went to Tennessee and also majored in philosophy, so we have this kind of shared. His was in Western philosophy, which is like, I'm too dumb for. But Tyler minored in film studies, so he has this interest in being a director, being behind the camera. I've been a clown since. Ever since. So I kind of turn it on for the camera for the recording. So we have definitely been in the lab, so to speak, kind of. What is our content going to look like toward the future? He's, I guess, if I could speak for him, less inclined to be in front of the camera. So you might see more of my ugly mug. And we might be doing some YouTube videos. I know. You know, we have Instagram going right now. We might kick up. Fire up a TikTok. And who knows, we might do a podcast, of course, with Mr. Jeremiah Lee as one of our. Our first guests, so we can find out a little bit more of what you've got going on in the garden. [01:50:09] Speaker B: Very cool. Well, love to hear it, and you guys are a great combo, so I'm excited to see whatever you guys put out. [01:50:16] Speaker A: Me too, man. [01:50:18] Speaker B: Very nice. Awesome. [01:50:20] Speaker A: Jacob, I couldn't thank you enough for the opportunity to sit down and chat with you. I would love to have done it in person at pbe, but we found a way. I hope you had an awesome Christmas, everyone out there. I hope you had an awesome Christmas and New Year. [01:50:37] Speaker B: Awesome. Love it. We'll end it on that one. [01:50:40] Speaker A: Yes. [01:50:41] Speaker B: All right, man. Thanks so much. Whoa. [01:50:53] Speaker A: Whoa, whoa.