Unificationists and their flower-loving friends will have an opportunity to get hands on-instruction in the Japanese art of Ikebana, or flower arranging, at two make-and-take demonstrations in New York and New Jersey on Memorial Day weekend.

Madame Yukiyo Sakata of Tokyo, a longtime supporter of the Japanese Women's Federation for World Peace (WFWP) will explain how to create designs of flowers and foliage that express discreetly defined moods. Ms. Sakata will do a demonstration from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., May 26, 2012 at Lovin' Life Church, 78 DeMott Avenue, in Clifton, New Jersey 07011.

Madame Yuki will demonstrate Ikebana from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., May 27, 2012 at the New Yorker Hotel in the third-floor Gramercy Room. At both demonstrations, participants will be asked to give a $20 donation for the Quake Victims' Relief Fund at the Japan Society, and they will take with them the flowers they arrange and a vase. The demonstration at the New Yorker Hotel will include a WFWP awards ceremony, a viewing of an exquisite ceremonial kimono, and a documentary film about Generation Peace trainees doing relief work in Japan's quake zone in February, 2012.

The Red Cross and the WFWP in Maryland benefited from Madame Sakata's Ikebana demonstration at the Japan-Aid fundraiser for quake victims at New Hope Academy in Landover Hills on May 1, 2011. Madame Yuki operates Ikebana schools in Tokyo, Los Angeles and Seoul, and she told the magazine Daily Single that her passion for flower arranging was acquired in her childhood and has remained her lifelong avocation. She has said that working with flowers has great therapeutic benefits to the handler.