Thanks Stella, thanks Colorado,
Well, this pot has a little story too.
When I went to Japan in 2018, I had the opportunity to visit several bonsai nurseries.
I saw, of course, many wonders, but I kept in mind the pot I was looking for for this tree.
I was lucky enough to find it when I visited the Yorozu-En nursery of Master Ayumu Fukano.
You could see that it had been used for many years, but I had no problem with that.
I was convinced that it was lime, so I thought I would clean it with vinegar to remove the white marks.
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When I got back to the hotel, I left it in the bathtub overnight

to do a first cleaning, the dirt was gone, but as I expected, the white marks were still there.
Sensei Fukano had told me to sand it, I thought it would be sacrilege to sand a bonsai pot and I thought he was joking when he told me that.
When I got home to Belgium, I was in a hurry to clean the pot with vinegar.
First I used 6% vinegar, but without result, then I used 14% vinegar... Still no result.
I tried again with hydrochloric acid on a small piece on the bottom of the pot as a precaution, but no effect.
I thought about what Mr. Fukano had told me and I tried with water sandpaper with a very fine grain and I got the first encouraging results.
Then I tried on the bottom of one side of the pot because I was always afraid of damaging it.
Little by little, the pot "came back to life", I sanded it for hours on all sides with paper with finer and finer grains and always with water to obtain this result.
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It became very, very soft, as if the clay used to make this pot was a terra sigillata.
It was so soft that I wondered if it was too soft to put a juniperus in.
I felt like I had a Bigei (Hirata Atsumi) pot in my hands.
I still wanted to give it a try, today, time is taking its toll, the patina is slowly coming back, it will still take a long time to get a wabi-sabi effect and a complete harmony with this tree, but I'm in no hurry
Today, I think that these white marks were due to the fertilizers and phytosanitary products given over the years.
If they were lime marks, they would have gone away with the acid, but there was no moss in reaction
I can never thank Master Fukano enough for his advice which seemed so crazy to me.