Jim:

The Japanese need to be advised of the advantages of the common Wal-Mart/Safeway ziploc sandwich bag. They may not be made of rice paper, but they work.

I have used the Japanese bags, and still have a small supply of them. The ones I have are two-layer, and the outer layer is removed at a late stage of ripening to color up the apple precisely to Japanese standards.

The Japanese bags are much more difficult to install than ziplocs because they have short, built-in wire twist ties, they are less durable than ziplocs, and they are much (much!) more expensive. A properly prepared ziploc bag, (cut off the lower corners; remove the plastic above the zipstrip), will provide the same insect protection as the Japanese bags. Apples left in the ziplocs when subsequently stored in refrigeration are also protected from shriveling, since the bags hold in humidity.

Apples grown in ziplocs are perfect enough for me, and actually seem to grow larger in the bags. Since I will be installing about 1,500 of them this season, maybe more, I like the price of a couple of cents per bag.

Plus, since you can stop spraying for curculio, codling moth, and apple maggot as soon as you install the bags, you might call them "organic". As a bonus, sooty blotch and flyspeck are significantly reduced, and in many cases eliminated.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA