La Condesa Lucanor

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(Source: whereisthecoool, via annie-the-vegan)

3 Tips for a GREEN Holiday Season

There are beautiful things about the holidays, like the generally festive spirit that starts to creep in come November and the unexplainable urge to get together with loved ones and have home-cooked meals with some candles flickering around the room… unfortunately the nostalgia is often overshadowed by the stress of buying presents, crowded shopping areas, traffic… and what I’ve been worried about this holiday season: how environmentally un-friendly the whole thing is!

What if we had a greener holiday season? This has been on my mind these last couple of days, and I’ve been thinking about how to balance out the carbon footprint of all the flying around I’m going to do in the next couple of months and I’ve come up with certain guidelines I’m already holding myself up to for this holiday season – here they go:

1. I will not buy crap. This is hard people, especially in China – land of all the Christmas junk you can possibly imagine – they don’t celebrate the holiday here - yet some part of the massive amount of Santa trinkets that are cluttering the world this month has been kept in their country of origin and they are CHEAP and have twinkly lights!
But I refuse to buy the stuff. My grandma taught me long ago that “cheap things are expensive” – and though I assume she mean the advice to be more stylistic than environmentally friendly, it is very “green”. Instead of buying all these cheap decorations that will only last through the month, why don’t we decorate with nuts, fallen branches, and if we really must buy something – let’s get a good quality object, something that is beautiful and timeless and that we’ll want to use for many years.

2. I will be socially responsible when buying presents. I’m getting things (good things, see number 1) that are made by local craftsman and designers and avoiding the big brand name shops. Gifting “experiences” rather than objects is also a good one - people love concert tickets, spa treatments, cooking classes… This makes sense not only because you’re supporting your local merchants and artists but also because the carbon footprint of these gifts is significantly lower.

3. I will keep the packaging minimal and green. Wrapping paper is beautiful and I adore it but it’s also tremendously wasteful. So I’ll try to reuse packaging as much as possible, I mean how many bags do we have lying around the house? Just take one, cut it up, turn it around, draw something festive on top and there’s your wrapping paper! If you MUST – get recycled one please.

That’s it - just three points, but if we stick to them we can help lower the massive amounts of completely unnecessary waste that will be produced around the world around the holiday months! Now THAT’S a reason to be all giddy and festive…

Posted at 10:04pm 1 notes #Christmas #Environmentally friendly #Green #buy local #carbon footprint #gifts #holidays #recycle #shopping #social responsability

Even in technological Tokyo there’s still space for these vintagy public phones! I was very grateful to find them all over the city, otherwise communication would have been complicated since my Chinese phone didn’t work…

Posted at 4:00pm 1 notes #Tokyo #phone #vintage #public phone #Japan #travel #communication

Two examples of beautiful Japanese practicality - the metro map that tells you how many minutes away you are from other stations (it is so obvious that people want to know this yet I haven’t seen it anywhere else and constantly have to rely on all sorts of apps to figure out how long it’ll take me to get to places) and the bathroom sign explaining how to “wash your bottom” in the spectacular toilet seats that are not only warm but have all sorts of features like sounds to muffle YOUR sounds, odor absorption, all sorts of jets… Japan is bidet-heaven.

Posted at 1:49pm 154 notes #practical #Japan #travel #metro #bathroom

Night-time Kyoto was about stalking Geishas around the Gion neighborhood…

Posted at 1:38pm 5 notes #Japan #Kyoto #geisha #Gion #night #travel

Gardeners in Kyoto were wearing these amazing work boots - not only do they look good but they seem perfect for climbing trees! The workers had very stylish outfits in this garden (and apparently all over Japan) with these “toe-shoes” that are comfortable, light and make it easy for them to feel the ground conditions. They also wear baggy pants (a little bit like harem pants) that they tuck into the boots. They even had scarves tucked into their work shirts!

I wanted some, and found them at Sou Sou, a really cool store full of one-toe socks and shoes as well as comfortable Japanese clothes, but they looked better on the gardeners!

Posted at 1:23pm 14 notes #Japan #Kyoto #garden #shoes #gardener #work #climbing trees #boots