This evening, I had a cup of tea along with nightingale cake. For the last few months, I’ve been trying not to use electric light after eight o’clock, to prevent insomnia and it has been helping quite a bit. But the real reason I took this picture was to show off the lovely kaishi paper my friend gave me recently. It is from Katsura Villa of the Imperial family. The phoenix (瑞鳥) design is copied from one of the walls of the Imperial Palace and the kaishi paper is edged with a design popular in the Heian period called “ugen” (繧繝). Below is a detail of the kaishi.
天地間に 