Today’s JBPP lesson was about taking phone messages. That was good practice, because I can’t always catch everything that’s said to me in Japanese, remember it all in Japanese, and write it all down in Japanese. It takes practice!<\/p>\n
After school, I had my calligraphy lesson with S-buchou, who works at Yamasa, and is a fine calligrapher. He creates some beautiful work. There was a small group of about four of us. Z-san from my JBPP class was also there. <\/p>\n
Today’s lesson was on the character for dragon, because next year is the year of the dragon, and it’s useful if you want to write \u00e5\u00b9\u00b4\u00e8\u00b3\u20ac\u00e7\u0160\u00b6 \u00e3\u0081\u00ad\u00e3\u201a\u201c\u00e3\u0081\u0152\u00e3\u0081\u02dc\u00e3\u201a\u2021\u00e3\u0081\u2020 nengajou<\/em>, or New Year’s postcards. Some people buy them, some do them by hand. Handmade are the best, but they take a lot of time to make.<\/p>\n Just about everyone in the class is better than I am. I’m out of practice, but I also know that even though I’ve been studying for five years or so, I still have a long ways to go.<\/p>\n I can write the characters just fine, but I don’t know how to add the right level of “oomph!” to it to make it as impactful as I’d like it to be.<\/p>\n S-buchou is really into \u00e3\u0192\u2021\u00e3\u201a\u00b6\u00e3\u201a\u00a4\u00e3\u0192\u00b3\u00e6\u203a\u00b8\u00e9\u0081\u201c dezain shodou<\/em>, or maybe the best way to put it is shodou<\/em> that has non-traditional artistic elements to it. So instead of just writing the character for dragon, make the character for dragon with the characteristics of a dragon. It makes for really cool artistic expressions of what the artist’s image of a character is.<\/p>\n He’s a really neat person to talk to. I’m so glad my Japanese has gotten to the point where we can chat!<\/p>\n He showed us this one long brush that was impossible to handle. As you use up ink, it goes from being a fluid, flowing brush to suddenly seizing up into some twisted shape. It’s like trying to write with a small animal’s tail, while the small animal is still using it. I want one! (Brush, not animal.)<\/p>\n I love the results I got with that brush. I have a feeling, though, that it will take me 20 years or so to get the hang of it.<\/p>\n S-buchou agreed to meet with me on Wednesday so we can talk about where I can get one. He knows a guy in Toyohashi who made his brush, and can sell me one, too.<\/p>\n Toyohashi is a great place to go for calligraphy brushes (fude<\/em> in Japanese). It’s a region where they’ve been making them for quite a while now, and the quality is famous in Japan. I’m excited! I’ll probably go to Toyohashi on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today was my first calligraphy lesson in Japan. I’ve been doing it for about five years in the US, but I’ve never had a chance to study it here. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to the teacher’s info, I’ll probably go to Toyohashi this weekend for supplies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[612,894,828,12,100,611,633,895,106],"class_list":["post-1157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan-trip","category-japanese-language-study","tag-calligraphy","tag-japan-trip","tag-japan2011","tag-japanese","tag-okazaki","tag-shodo","tag-toyohashi","tag-travel","tag-yamasa","category-3-id","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}