Japanese haibun method: mixing journal entry with a haiku

A haibun is a Japanese form of journaling involving a journal entry followed by a haiku poem. The haiku serves as a distillation, an associated thought or an epiphany to the actual journal entry. The Japanese poet Basho and the beat poet Jack Kerouac worked in the haibun form.

Remember, the classic haiku poem is 5-7-5 -- meaning three lines of poetry; five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line and five syllables in the third line. However, in English language haiku, these rules are flexible.

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Japanese haibun method: mixing journal entry with a haiku

Travel Journal Shortcuts

One of the best times to start a journal is during a special trip or vacation. And when teamed with photos and drawings, the same journal entries will take on added power to fortify an artist's journal or scrapbook. How do you start a travel journal, especially if you have never journaled before?

Take a shortcut. This means writing short, brief phrases that describe the people, places and things you encounter on your journey, instead of trying to tackle long sentences and hefty paragraphs. And because you're on-the-go, you may not have time for anything more than short, pithy descriptions.

Think postcard writing, but even more brief!

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Travel Journal Shortcuts

100 Memories Travel Journal

Hilary Liftin from Los Angeles described an interesting travel journaling tradition between her and her husband in the April 2005 issue of Real Simple magazine in an article called "Write It Down -- It's not a list. It's a lifeline." Whenever jetting back from a vacation together, Lifton and her husband pass a paper back and forth between themselves to log 100 memories from the holiday they just experienced.

In order to complete their list before touchdown back home, they have to dig up some obscure images, such as Entry number 12 from a Mojave Desert escapade: "By the pool at 29 Palms Inn, Chris briefly looked like a skinny Elvis." or Entry number 48 from another vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine: "We flew a kite until it fell in the water and a wave snapped it in two."

Liftin finds that making these entries is "a way for us to preserve the random, funny, sweet little moments of our trips that would otherwise be forgotten."Newlywed Liftin also said, "We love the tradition of our memory lists so much that if and when we have kids, we'll undoubtedly force them to participate. I can hear it now, 'Aw, Mom! Do we have to do the memory list?'

In this age of digital cameras, it's nice to put more effort into remembering than the click of a button."Note from me: However, these snippet memories can make the perfect companions scribbled next to photographs from the trip when a scrapbook or photo album is later assembled.

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100 Memories Travel Journal