Check out these photo gift images:
Decorative Hexagonal Origami Gift Box with Lid: # 04
Image by Dominic's pics
This box is one of 20 different boxes for sale by auction on eBay in support of survivors of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan. Click here to visit / to return to the eBay listing [Item number: 120728875670]. The auction for this item closes on Friday the 3rd of June 2011 at 00:43 a.m. British Summer Time (UTC + 1).
✹ Click here to see a thumbnail overview of all the boxes, or watch a Slideshow of all the boxes.
Proceeds of the auction - after eBay and PayPal fees have been deducted - will be donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society.
✹ To see a larger, more detailed, view of this picture click on the small magnifying glass icon at the top right of the picture, then click on "View all sizes", then click on "Original" - which displays the largest and best quality image.
✹ To see a view of the base of the box - without the lid - click here.
About the Japanese Red Cross Society
The Japanese Red Cross are one of three major fundraising organisaitions based in Japan (the other two being the Japanese broadcaster NHK and the Red Feather Central Community Chest of Japan - originally a post World War II re-building organisation). You can download two english language reports relating to the disaster from the Japanese Red Cross website:
Operations Update No.1 - 13th April 2011 [.pdf file, retrieved 17th May 2011]
Operations Update No.2 - 6th May 2011 [.pdf file, retrieved 17th May 2011]
Over two months on, the needs of many of the survivors remain desperately basic. There has been an increased incidence of pneumonia and associated fatalities. As well as helping with practical and medical requirements, the Japanese Red Cross Society are helping people deal with "Shell Shock" / Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and further developing services to address these issues.
Perhaps most impressively, they helped quickly set up a management structure to co-ordinate help from all the major fundraisers, a committee including academics and representatives from the 15 most badly affected prefectures [local governments]. The pre-existing local Red Cross chapters [branches] are helping with governance.
Although Japan has a large economy, and domestically the japanese have been hugely generous towards aid efforts, like everywhere else, many people of course are not personally rich. There is still epic upheaval. Much of welfare is normally provided by family and community, a system that breaks down when whole barrios are fragmented and diminished. Services like adoption and fostering, for example - normally always done by relatives - are having to be developed. A planning policy of building schools on higher ground saved many children, but even after encouraging teachers back out of retirement, there is still a shortage of experienced teachers. Japan is mostly mountains and sea, with very little spare land suitable for building, and so - while rebuilding takes place - temporary accommodation has had to be built on land normally reserved for other activities, for example on school playgrounds.
If you enjoy shopping in support of the Japanese Red Cross Society, you might also like Tomodachi Calling, a cafepress web store / shop (recommend by a fellow flickrer schmid91, who helped document the aftermath of the tsunami in Ishinomaki Myagi prefecture).
Japan based english language online newspapers
The Japan Times
Daily Yomiuri
The Asahi Shimbun
About the decorative hexagonal origami gift box
The box is made up from 12 square origami papers - 6 for the lid and 6 for the base. No cutting, glue or adhesive tape is used.
Although Japan has a long tradition of paper folding, the design of the box is modern, by Tomoko Fuse 布施 知子, who is a renown unit origami designer and artist. Unit origami is a method of building up models using pre-folded components or units.
If you are an accurate and consistent paper folder, but are new to unit origami, and you would like to make your own box, I would recommend her book "Origami Boxes: Moribana Style" [# ISBN-10: 0870408216 - # ISBN-13: 978-0870408212] as an excellent introduction. Connecting the units together can be a bit fiddly at first, and the book also includes designs for more simple square and triangular boxes, which give the opportunity to practice and develop the skills needed for doing the final assembly.
(Until Asimo gets a bit more nimble fingered, the box is unlikely to flood the market anytime soon...)
If you get the bug, she has also created and written about very much more complex models. "Unit Origami: Multidimensional Transformations" [ISBN-10: 0870408526 - ISBN-13: 978-0870408526] is considered a classic text on the subject.
Paper making was a traditional supplemental business of farmers in Japan during the winter. The very cold water during that season enabled the fibres in the pulp to be soaked without becoming subject to decay, and some also argue that cold shrinks the fibres, creating a finer, crisper paper.
The gift that brightens my workplace
Image by gwilmore (I HATE THE NEW LAYOUT!)
Shortly after I arrived at work this morning, Commissioner Myra Harris of the Maricopa County Superior Court called my office and left a message for me. In a pleasant and cheerful voice, she instructed me to come see her in her chambers, where an unspecified surprise awaited me. I walked over right away and learned that the surprise in question was the pillow you see here. It measures about 12x12 inches, and Commissioner Harris made it herself. She had wanted to give it to me on the evening I performed the bolero with Angie, but she was sick all that week and therefore unable to attend the event. I said that was fine, because the award of the gift was in close enough proximity to the dance performance that we could consider them to be linked.
I was absolutely delighted with this thoughtful little gift, which obviously required some loving effort on the part of its giver. Commissioner Harris told me that the lady in this stitched profile was Angie, who, unfortunately, might not be able to recognize herself in it. The man, obviously, was meant to be me. The Commissioner's clerk, who was present during this exchange, quipped that the picture was perforce inaccurate because the pens were missing from my pocket; I responded that on the contrary, this made it all the more accurate, because Angie would have confiscated any and all pens from my pocket long before we even got around to forming a dance frame together.
(That deserves an explanation. Like the nerd I freely admit being, I routinely carry several pens in my shirt pocket, usually at least three and sometimes as many as half a dozen. For the past several months, whenever I have shown up for a dance lesson with those pens in my pocket and my Superior Court employee badge hanging around my neck, Angie has confiscated pens and badge from me at the beginning of the lesson and placed them on a nearby table for the duration. She claims they throw me off balance, but I believe she really does it to amuse and entertain me and make me smile -- and in that case, what can I say? It works! So I play along with the little ritual, and occasionally add a twist of my own, such as the time I proudly informed her that I had intentionally put on an Angie-proof shirt that morning. She looked me over and asked what that meant, and I pointed out that it was a long-sleeve pullover shirt with no breast pocket, and therefore no pens available for her to confiscate. Then I said "nya-nya!" to her, at which she expressed great indignation to the studio manager and the owner, both of whom happened to be passing by at the moment. She did not appear to get a great deal of sympathy from them, by the way.)
The Commissioner told me I should use this pillow to support my back during my conferences, but I quickly decided otherwise, at least for the time being. The legend sewn into the pillow got me to thinking that if real men can dance, then it logically follows that John Wayne, Jack Palance, Gary Cooper, and Charles Bronson, along with others of their kind, must have been terrific dancers, because they definitely were real men themselves. So I decided to place the pillow next to my computer screen, in full view of the litigants who attend my conferences, in order to allow them to see it and be made aware of who and what they are dealing with. Let them mess with me, and I am liable to break into a foxtrot, or perhaps a bolero!
Speaking of which, the notes you see taped to my wall were the subject of this photo a couple of weeks ago. I placed them there on the day of the performance so I could glance at them from time to time throughout my workday as I thought through the routine. I have left them there because the performance ended up being such a happy experience for me, notwithstanding my initial impression that it had been a disaster. But as things turned out, it was a true case of mourning being turned into joy. (See Jeremiah 31:13.)
Christmas Eve gag Gifts
Image by Vox Efx
Since I was little we always opened one of our gifts on Christmas Eve, (helps with getting the little ones to sleep) we have added making the gift a gag gift. Model Mayhem ~ Photography/Travel Blog ~ Flickr ~ Twitter
