Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Succulent EXPO in Tokyo


(click for XXL)

I'm finally back! Well, back in Nara. :)

This were two exhausting weeks: first the internship in Fukushima, then, without even coming home, a trip to Tokyo. I'm so tired I could sleep for a week but since I've managed to catch a cold on the last day sleeping is a bit difficult. Anyway...

I've got something to tell! I haven't planned it at all (couldn't find any info online) but I could visit this year's Tokyo Cactus and Succulent Fair! I went to the shop that is known to sell lithops once in a while (Station Ikebukuro, SEIBU building, 9th floor which is the roof). After actually finding a whole shop counter full of lithops and getting myself several plants I was told at the checkout that the Expo starts 20.03 and will be held exactly at this shop. So I went again 20.03 and could make a great lot of pictures: lithops, haworthiae, cacti etc. My knowledge of cacti and other succulents is very limited so I just tried to get the whole store on SD card so maybe you experts can find something interesting for yourselves :). There were quite some very beautiful and very expensive plants: I especially was amazed to see a teeny-tiny haworthia hybrid (?) for 35000 yen. I will post some pictures here soon but if you want them all just drop me a line in the comments (The tags are in japanese, so if you're interested in a particular plant I could try and figure it out for you). Although there were a lot of different lithops (all tagged) there were none of the japanese cultivars I longed to see: shimada's apricot, kousougyoku etc. Still, there were other interesting plants: I got myself a chocolate dorotheae de Boer I wanted, 'Top Red' karasmontana, C207 gesinae (which has a pretty lilac color for some reason) and 8 other lithops plants which were smiling at me (they do that sometimes, haha). I'm going to ship them with EMS to Germany sometime before I myself leave in August.

5 comments:

  1. The succulent fair sounds fun. You should get some sleep, it sounds like a busy few weeks! My little Lithops are starting to get some colour. The Conophytum are really disappointing though. They seem to still be growing just not as exciting.

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  2. Enjoy the fair. Also being growers of Haworthias, we would love to see them, especially some of the Haworthia hybrids the Japanese are famous for.

    Our Lithops are also doing quite well now and the changes seem palpable.

    Enjoy!

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  3. @Aerelonian: thank you :) it's been tough. but the fair was interesting. i've never been to such a thing before, it was exciting!
    so your lithops kids are growning? it's fun to watch, isn't it? (i'll check your blog asap!) it's always thrilling to see their first patterns. :)
    yes, i fail to warm to conophytum plants mostly because they're all the same to me. well, they're surely not, but so they seem when they're not exactly in bloom - conophytum flowers are beautiful :)

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  4. @Luther: thanks!
    I need to run the pictures through photoshop (they're too big now) first, then I'll upload them :) hope you'll be able to find something, i had to shoot the photos quickly in passing.. it was embarrassing too, because i was the only one taking pictures, haha, i kinda wasn't sure i was allowed to do that.

    so exciting! haha, my mom makes a report to me from time to time about how mine are doing, and they seem to be almost through with their change, too. she's doing a great job caring for them :)

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  5. @Luther: okay, the photos are not that good so without making them smaller, i guess, you'll be able to see more if you zoom in. :) these are all the non-lithops pics
    http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UBUEOWWA
    please let me know if you can't download the file~

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