A fun family seasonal craft, perfect for fall in Japan

One thing I enjoy doing with my children is hands-on crafts, and we recently did a fun one for the autumn season that is cheap, easy, and features one of the quintessential markers of the fall months in Japan. It also doesn’t require hard-to-find materials to make! I thought these persimmon branches were a lot of fun to make, and my kids did, too.

Making your own persimmon branch is a fun craft for kids to take part in, and it doesn’t need any fancy equipment or expensive supplies.

What you’ll need:

• A stick (nothing fancy – you can probably find several good ones on a walk around your neighborhood if you’re a countryside dweller like I am!)
• Scrap paper such as newspaper or old magazines
• Thick twine, ideally in a brownish hue to match your branch
• Washi paper in orange and green – you can find this at just about every craft store here!
• A hot glue gun (I got mine from Daiso, and it’s still going strong after several years! They sell the refill glue sticks for them there as well).

How to make them:

Step 1.

Scrunch up your newspaper, magazines, or other scrap paper into balls. We tried to go with about fist-size for these, roughly in line with what an actual persimmon size is.

Step 2.

Wrap your orange washi paper around the scrunched up scrap paper, and use scissors to cut out the shape of a persimmon top from your green washi paper (you can see the shape you need to cut out on a real persimmon here – basically a four-sided leaf-looking structure). You can also cut out some regular-shaped leaves from your green washi paper to decorate the stick with.

Step 3.

Cut your twine in about 1.5 inch lengths. Tuck the twine into the top of the orange “ball” you’ve created, then gently poke a hole through the middle of your persimmon leaf “top” and thread that onto the twine. Glue everything together with your hot glue gun, and then once dried, affix the other side of the string to your branch. Repeat this for however many persimmons you create (we opted for four on each branch). I recommend that adults only handle the hot glue gun, unless you have older children!

Step 4.

Display your persimmon branch wherever you’d like to in your home!

I hope that if you try this craft with your children that you’ll have as much fun with it as we did! Enjoy the autumn season!