We Are Tomodachi Autumn 2017

30/36

30“My friends said I was crazy and my parents weren’t happy when I told them I chose bonsai for my career,” smiles Costa Rican bonsai artist Juan Andrade, recalling the day he decided to leave home to pursue his dream in Japan.Andrade started doing bonsai at the age of 15. Growing up in Costa Rica, where over half of the land preserves national forests and even the smallest home boasts a flower garden, nature ran through his veins. “We have great appreciation for nature in Costa Rica, just like the Japanese people. That's probably why I became fascinated with bonsai.” Unfortunately, Andrade had no teachers to guide him in Costa Rica, and only a small bonsai club and the Internet were his sources of knowledge. So when he passed the national university entrance exam with the second highest score in the nation, he chose to major in plant biology hoping to acquire knowledge that could be used for bonsai. Even after graduating from university, he would use his holidays to travel abroad to take bonsai classes from various professional teachers. His family and friends thought Andrade had a successful career and life in Costa Rica, but one day, he made a sudden detour. On that day, Andrade went home to tell his parents that he was going to Japan to become a bonsai artist. “Bonsai is considered a rich man’s hobby, not a career in my country, and I am not even from a rich family. So, I sold my car, my apartment and basically everything I had to go to Japan.” Andrade continued to explain that when he went travelling abroad to take bonsai classes, he was actually searching for a bonsai master who would accept him as an apprentice. “I stayed true to my dream and it took me 15 years just to become an apprentice.”The bonsai master that Andrade found was Junichiro Tanaka, the fourth-generation bonsai master of Aichi-My Bonsai DreamSeries: Friends of Japan