Rhys' Bonsai Presentation (no pics)

Bonsai

The History of Bonsai
Potted plants aren’t new to us but there as old as 4000 B.C. were in Egypt they have found pictures of potted plants. Bonsai latterly means potted plant in Japanese. Bonsais originally came from the China and made the way to Japan through Zen Buddhists. In the Tokugawa period the bonsai became very popular among the wealthy as a past time and to decorate houses.


Care
Watering of the bonsai really depends on the type tree since almost any tree can be “trained” to be a bonsai. Generally you want the bonsai in a dry environment, like I said how you take care of a bonsai depends on the type of tree, some need lots of watering while others don’t. You need to “feed” bonsais with fertilizer in the winter you want one with little or no nitrogen but in the summer you want a balanced fertilizer. There are some tools you need as well to take care of you bonsai and the most common is the concave cutter.

Styles
There are many deferent styles you can train your bonsai to do but I’m just going to list the most common. There is formal upright, informal upright, slant, cascade, semi-cascade, and group or forest.
Formal upright is were the trunk is straight and decreases in diameter as it goes up.
Informal upright the trunk is in the shape of an S.



Slant is pretty self-explanatory the trunk is on a slant.

Semi-cascade the bonsai is over the pot but never goes below the bottom of the pot.

Cascade is like the semi but it grows below the bottom of the pot.

Group is a group of bonsai in one pot the biggest in the middle and the smallest on the outside.

Cultural assignments

Posters or powerpoints should be done and handed in Thursday next week and presented the week after.

Dialogue 1

Students should neatly write out and translate Dialogue 1 bu Tuesday.

hiragana

Students have been introduced to all of the hiragana alphabet. They should continue to study it for mastery. They can expect a test soon. 15 minutes of study everyday is a good goal.

Here are the links we looked at in class.

http://www.easyjapanese.org/index.html

http://www.tamarillo.net.au/hiragana/learn_hiragana_game.html

http://www.gyford.com/japanese/

http://www.manythings.org/japanese/kana/

http://manuelsweb.com/nippon.htm

Cultural Assignments

Students have begun work on cultural presentations with poster and presentation component. Students should have a large portion of their rough notes completed by the end of Thursday's class.

Welcome to Japanese

Welcome to Japanese 9. Japanese is an academic language class. If you wish to succeed in this class, be prepared to put in 15 min to 30 min of self study every day of the week. Consistancy is the key, as an hour and a half of study on Sunday is not the same as 15 minutes every day.

Students should aim to know, on sight, the hiragana alphabet by October, and know it inside out by Christmas.