Origami presents

Not that my kids are especially talented at it or anything, but they really love to make origami.

Origami has always been a significant aspect of Japan with their paper cranes and incredible delicate paper work done with fancied paper to make the observer a touch in awe with the delicacy and preciseness of the degree at which the paper is folded. In particular, cranes are most notable. This is because the crane is a significant bird in Japan. There is a particular Japanese crane with a red crested head. These birds are one of the few species that are entirely monogamous throughout their entire life. The crane that is thought to bring good fortune and thus if you fold a thousand of them, a crane is said to grant your wish. What is so significant about the art of paper folding is that for the longest time, centuries even, paper folding was passed along singularly by word of mouth and demonstration. There were no books on the matter for decades to come. Thus it is more or less a traditional art for, an intangible heritage of Japan.

I feel like my kids (ES) have endless supplies of origami paper and they are endlessly making me little paper presents. I have little lanterns and paper men and a samurai shirt and bunnies, frogs, and cats and hearts and this awesome necklace. Their gifts are endless. Sometimes neither I nor they have any idea what they made, but they folded the paper into some neat creation to gift me with. Other times they will have me sign a paper and fold it into something and then sign another paper themselves and fold it and give that one to me so we would be like an origami secret couple. 

But occasionally, this origami can be frightening stuff. When they get older (my JHS) they have a significantly decreased interest in the origami art, but later, perhaps high school, their interest in not so much increased as are the myths that come with it. There is an old voodoo like charm for origami paper people in which curses are involved. The belief is that you would take one of these paper people with a name of the intended scrawled upon it into a select haunted or otherwise creepy forest at night and nail them to a tree. I think that there are different reasons or beliefs surrounding this, but one is to curse people and another might be for love?

who needs a hair cut? Meeeeee