NEW YORK--In time for the Christmas season, Japanese women have started selling gift-wrapping paper in New York featuring pictures drawn by children in disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.
NEW YORK--In time for the Christmas season, Japanese women have started selling gift-wrapping paper in New York featuring pictures drawn by children in disaster-stricken Fukushima Prefecture.The two projects are intended to help New Yorkers remember the areas hit hard by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and to deliver a message to receivers of the gifts.In one of the projects, a group of artists designed wrapping paper based on 36 pictures drawn by children attending the Minato day-care center in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, which hosts the crippled Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. The pictures feature smiling faces and sunflowers.AK (Akemi Kakihara), a singer who has lived in the United States for 10 years, was given the pictures when she played for the children at the day-care center.Profits from sales of the wrapping paper will be donated to the Great East Japan Earthquake Fukushima Kodomo Kifukin fund for children.Another group consisting mainly of Japanese mothers living in the United States started the Fukushima Love Wrapping Project, in collaboration with mothers in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, which offers five kinds of wrapping paper designed from 40 pictures drawn by kindergarten pupils in Iwaki.The group plans to use profits from the sales to help rebuild the city's Hisanohama Daiichi Kindergarten, which was heavily damaged in the disaster.Orders for the wrapping paper from the group can be placed at: