Thanks John for the first comment and the welcome!
Here are different angles of the Japanese White Pine. I the photo I took outside is depicts the needle color more accurately. I think this tree has nebari potential.
I purchased it from an online catalog (wavecrest nursery in Michigan). It was the only place where I could find JWP for a student-friendly price. The manager is fantastic and she said since many of their customers are "bonsai people", she knew what I was looking for. The tree arrived 2 weeks ago(Sept 15th) with its root ball wrapped in plastic. It's a beautiful and healthy tree, with lots of small buds all along the branches and lower trunk, and many white tips on the roots. roughly 18 inches tall, 1.5" trunk, about 11 years old.
I know early spring is the time to repot, but I had no choice but to pot it that day. What I'm mainly concerned about is the roots. I removed about 25% of the root mass, mostly large dead roots, and took out roughly 50% of the old nursery soil.
It's been in a cool shady spot for 2 weeks now, in a 3 gallon nursery pot. I'm using a mixture of 75% course turface, 20% regular bonsai mix (gravel, akadama, grit, turface, bark bits, and ecto/endo mycorrhizae spores), 5% decomposed Japanese White Pine needles with some extra white spongy mycorrhizal fungus that I collected under large Eastern White Pines in my yard.
My local New York climate is very similar to Japanese White Pine's native habitat (central Japan).
I'm hoping the tree will naturally acclimatize.
I love this tree and I hope it can recover quickly!!!