Moshi, Moshi, students,
I am very busy getting ready for my trip to Japan. I depart this Sunday, and I still have much to do. Luckily, I did not wait until the last minute!
Are you wondering about the picture for this entry? Those are the gifts that I am going to take with me to give to the Japanese host family I will be staying with while I am in Minamisoma, Fukushima. One of he gifts I chose to bring is a book called Simply Beautiful by John Adams. It is a pictorial essay of our gorgeous scenery and people(of course, what else would a librarian bring!). The other is a tasteful product of Kentucky's cultural heritage. What I wanted you to notice was the beautiful wrapping---I did not do this! I do know that the Japanese appreciate a nicely wrapped and presented gift, so I asked a friend of mine, you know her as Miss Sarah, to do the job for me. She did a beautiful job--tasteful and elegant,also reflecting the current season, very appropriate for any Japanese person. I am confident my host family will admire and appreciate the coverings of my gifts. I will be sure to relate to you how they enjoyed them. The bundle of twigs in the lower left hand-corner Miss Sarah made for me on Tuesday. It is for a gift I have yet to purchase (okay, I did wait till the last minute on some stuff). I recently was told that the family I will be staying with includes a musuko san who likes to watch horse racing. I have ordered a t-shirt from the Kentucky Derby museum for him and will fold it in some copper-colored Shantung material I have. The twigs with red berries will decorate this last package.
The Japanese call wrapping in cloth, furoshiki. It has become an art form,( their culture likes to take skills and perfect them into an art), but it had humble beginnings too. Historians believe that furoshiki began around the 700-1100's, but it took hold during the Edoperiod. Remember, I mentioned Edo as the village that became a city, and then evolved into what we now call Tokyo. It was during the Edo period that people going to the public baths,sento, would bundle up the clothes they were carrying. From this time cloth was used to wrap a variety of things, mostly because the Japanese are not a wasteful people, finding a use for what scraps of cloth they saved. In more recent times, furoshiki has fallen out of use due to the convenience of plastic bags. But, on March 6, 2006, the Japanese Minister of the Environment, Yuriko Koike, created a furoshiki cloth to promote its use in this modern day.
Since Miss Sarah used paper to wrap the presents shown, and had to fold it, I'd also like to talk about the art of origami, but I'll save that for a future posting.
i yoru (good night)
