Strapped into a too-narrow, no leg-room Air Canada seat, I’m editing a manuscript, and the distinguished-looking fellow beside me looks over and, in a strong Italian accent, says, “Are you a writer or editor?”
“I’m revising some of my writing,” I reply, and hand him a copy of my last haibun collection, hoping it will keep him quiet while I work.
Ray Rasmussen: All Things Haibun Blog 
Thanks Ray. I think travel is best suited to haibun writing .
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Hi Kenneth. And that’s what Basho did in Journey to the Far North, basically a travel journal using haibun or what he called haiku writing. Here’s his opening for the journal. https://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-oku.htm But Issa didn’t travel much so his haibun and haiku were more about everyday things, like those you and I might experience. Here’s a passage from The spring of my life:
An Early Passage from Issa’s Oraga Haru
Still clothed in the dust of this suffering world, I celebrate the first day in my own way. And yet I am like the priest, for I too shun trite popular seasonal congratulations. The commonplace “crane” and “tortoise” echo like empty words, like the actors who come begging on New Year’s Eve with empty wishes for prosperity. The customary New Year pine will not stand beside my door. I won’t even sweep my dusty house, living as I do in a tiny hermitage constantly threatening to collapse under harsh north winds. I leave it all to Buddha, as in the ancient story.
The way ahead may be dangerous, steep as snowy trails winding through high mountains. Nevertheless I welcome the New Year just as I am.
And although she was born only last May, I gave my little daughter a bowl of soup and a whole rice cake for New Year’s breakfast, saying:
No servant to draw wakamizu, New Year’s “first water.”
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that was refreshing the way Issa used the haibun.
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