I have used bamboo before, both dried out and live. have never had a problem with live bamboo, the dried out stuff does not work well at all. with the live bamboo just make sure it is not comletly submerged and it should be ok.
I also bought some bamboo from walgreens (lucky bamboo... $15 for like 20 stalks or somthing like that). I like the look of it and it seems to be easy to grow n very low light. It's been sitting in a tank with about 2 inches of water with little to no light (katrina) for about 3 weeks now and greener than ever! Not sure on how its growing a of now though.
Wow, nice. I was thinking about a lil bit of japanese style, and i want some bamboos in my tank. But the probem is, my tank's high. So can't use bamboo.