San Francisco Bans Plastic Bags: Furoshiki Rule

Yesterday, San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to ban the use of bags made of petroleum products. Kudos to San Francisco for its environmental friendly legislation. The buzz now is what will be used in the place of plastic bags. Princess Haiku says, it's time to return to traditional Japanese FUROSHIKI.

The Japanese already know this and furoshiki are now the thing. A furoshiki is a square cloth made of durable cotton or recycled fabric that is folded into a bag of sundry shapes and sizes. Furoshiki are practical, useful, washable, beautiful and reusable. In other words, the perfect solution to polluting the environment with tons of garbage bags.

Follow the links for precise descriptions and pictures of Furoshiki.

Mitsuo Katsui a leading designer in Japan has created dazzling, contemporary designs for these cloths. Pingmag has featured several articles on Furoshiki including several of Katsui's designs.

Cosplay : Your Mask or Mine

In Japan, about 50,000 thousand adults dress up regularly on weekends in a variety of colorful masks and costumes to create new identities for themselves. This sounds like great fun to me. We are all dressed up in costumes anyway; the problems is that we don't realize it. Princess Haiku, says, "It's time to Change your Mask" and come to the ghost ball. Luminous colors welcome.

Japan for the Uninvited: Cosplay

Lily

Lily is a ninety-one year old Asian American calligrapher. She will retire in April and will be donating her life's work to a local university. I met her two weeks ago at an art exhibit where she was displaying several of her water color scrolls. Our spirits touched and Lily invited me to visit a class she has been teaching for twenty-five years. Lily asked me what my favorite flower was. Chrysanthemum, I replied and she painted me three gold chrysanthemums and a dragonfly. I watched intently as Lily painted the flowers and her brush strokes were so perfect it was as though they were choreographed. She told me that she began to learn calligraphy and brush painting when she was eleven years old and living in occupied territory. "There was so much pain after the war," she said. "One needed to find a way to escape; to endure it and I found solace in water color painting. - This is what people do- art, painting, music, dance. This is called culture." I understood Lily, for this is what my writing and music does for me; makes difficult days possible and inspires me to transcend barriers and limitations of my life.