TONY CAMILLERI, AUTHOR OF "CARNIVOROUS PLANTS".	Tony visits the VCPS annual show.	Tony visited Triffid Park on November 15, 1998 to take photos of our sarracenias for his book "Carnivorous Plants".

OUR JAPANESE VISITORS

On Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November 1996 we were host at our nursery Dingley Home and Garden to the Victorian Carnivorous Plant Society's annual show.  We advertised world wide for anyone interested to come and join us for this occasion, and were very pleased to have many interstate guest from around Australia, and also four international guests from Japan.
Our Japanese visitors arrived Saturday 16th November around lunchtime, by taxi from Tullamarine airport.  Before they had even put their bags down they started producing many presents and photos for Colin and Tina, as is their custom.  After finally putting down their bags they headed straight for the show benches of the V.C.P.S. to gaze in wonder (and take many photos) of all the spectacular carnivorous plants.
They toured our growing houses, staring wide eyed in fascination and taking many more photos, until hearing the water coming through the pipes, I yelled "RUN" but not in time for the sprinklers to give them and their cameras a light shower!  Afterwards we took them to Colin and Tina's house for a rest and they informed us that they were looking for "Big Beer Party"!
Saturday night had been organised with a spit roast for all the V.C.P.S. members to enjoy.  The evening went off well and the spit roast was delicious.  But the evening was dampened a bit by the heavens opening up and dropping golf ball sized hail stones on the root of the nursery.  This just happened to be right in the middle of David Bond's speech, and was so loud that nobody could hear him.  David who is the president of the society presented the four Japanese guests, Yukio Koshikawa, Makoto Miyamoto, Naoki Tanabe and Tsutomu Inoue with gift cards and V.C.P.S. caps, which they didn't take off all weekend.  He then presented Colin, Tina and myself with a brilliant hand drawn picture of a Sarracenia purpurea ssp. purpurea.  Our Japanese friends had a lovely night with much "VB" drinking.
Sunday morning we tried to educate them with traditional Aussie Vegemite on toast.  They weren't too keen on it until we mentioned that it was made from the dead yeast from the beer vats ("BEER" they all said at once) and the toast was soon eaten up!
Their aim for the weekend was to see as much natural carnivorous plant "habitat" as possible.  Even if it was dormant, they wanted to see, and photograph, the areas.  So Colin spend Sunday morning and all day Monday driving them to see "habitat".  Sunday afternoon, Colin dropped the four Japanese off at another nursery, pointing out the coffee shop where they could buy lunch.  After about four hours they arrived back at Dingley very hungry.  They had had such a good time they had forgotten to eat, so the V.C.P.S. sausage sizzle was relit and they enjoyed a very late lunch of sausages in bread.
Sunday evening we took them to Colin and Tina's new property in Keysborough (which is now "Triffid Park") and with the help of drawing pictures of houses and arrows, I managed to explain that this is where we were moving to.
Later that evening we had a family tea at Colin and Tina's, with their eldest daughter Sharon, her husband Crain and 14 month old daughter Jessica, and my husband Jason.  Jason and I have been studying Japanese for 12 months, so we tried to practice with our new friends, while they tried to practice their English.
After dinner, Naoki brought out his bag of magic tricks.  He did many fascinating things including joining two rings together, making a silk hanky disappear, and some great coin tricks.  We found out that as well as being a high school teacher of tax and a collector of carnivorous plants, he is also a magician, having studied magic in high school.  Naoki is 33 years old and has a 26 year old wife and baby daughter Hanae born on January 10th 1996.  (In Japan, it is not considered rude to ask how old someone is).  Naoki met Yukio about three years ago when Yukio was trying to start the Japanese Carnivorous Plant Society.
Yukio Koshikawa, 64 years old, is building the Nansow Carnivorous Plants Botanical Gardens in Japan, funding mainly by selling carnivorous plants.  The land he is using is approximately one hectare and will consist of bunkhouses, a library and a bath house (Japanese don't have bathrooms in their houses, they only have toilets.  They must go down the street to a bath house where they can wash and meet up with other Japanese, so it is considered a very special place.)  The gardens will be opened in the year 2000.  Yukio is very famous in Japan for his carnivorous plants.
We did not get to find out very much about Tsutomu (or Tom, as we called him), as his English was not very good and our Japanese was no better.  But Tom is a very keen collector of carnivorous plants and this is his second trip to Australia this year (having stayed with Tina and Colin earlier in the year with Yukio and his daughter) to look at the plants in their natural environment.
Makoto is also a mad collector of carnivorous plants.  He enjoys going out into the "habitat" and discovering new varieties of carnivorous plants.  He told us that the Carnivorous Plant Society meets four times per year in Tokyo for their meetings.  He also helped us with some Japanese words:
Carnivorous = shokutsu
Plants = buts
Carnivorous plants = shokubuts
Well Tuesday morning came and our Japanese visitors had to leave us and fly on to Cairns where they were going to inspect more "habitat" of carnivorous plants.

Written by Donna Clayton.

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