I wanted to take an origami crane to Sasaki Sadako's Memorial at Hiroshima.

She died of luekemia caused by radiation when she was just 12 years old. She believed that if she could fold one thousand origami cranes, a Japanese symbol of happiness and longevity, she would be cured. She did manage to fold one thousand but she did not get better so she started to fold another thousand, she managed five hundred but died at the age of 12 years old in 1955, ten years after the atomic bomb devasted the city of Hiroshima. Her belief inspired her nation and her classmates completed the second thousand cranes. Even today school children all over Japan make paper cranes in memory of Sasaki Sadako and the terrible event that changed the world. In taking our paper cranes we want to remeber the courage of this girl and the pain of the workld caused by war.

We struggled to follow the visual clues to make our cranes but here they are, flying through our Japanese maple that we've loved for 24 years. On Friday we'll all be having a Japanese meal at Bonsai, East Richmond Street, Edinburgh - which is brilliant by the way - and maybe we'll make some more cranes to take with us and leave. How about trying to make one too?