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Before I came to Japan I thought that only bonsai trees were shaped and pruned in a drastic and elegant way but one of the most striking things to hit me in my first few weeks was how many trees in Japan were so un-tree like - as if they were raised on an alien world.

All of them look like the one above. I`ve seen grandpas in the suburb I live in meticulously trimming the leaves with scissors to get the perfect mound of leaves on each stem. In the streets, workmen come regularly to severely prune nearly every tree there is next to the road leaving a couple of branches to sprout forth higher and higher. I can understand that near to power lines, a wild tree may not be so desirable, but why the desire to create alien trees please?

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