Calligraphy

Shodo

I really like Japanese calligraphy.  I took a class once and it was really fun. That's why I was excited to do it again in Japan.

The teacher was a really cool guy. We all crowded around him and watched him draw the character 永, which means eternity. 

They gave us some how to papers and set us loose.

I hadn't done calligraphy for a long time, and trying to draw that character was making me lose some self-confidence. I tried it three or four times and then moved on. I didn't take any pictures of it.

I got back into my "groove" by writing 馬, the character for horse, and my favorite character, 蒸. Nobody gets why I like that character but me. I just think it looks cool,  but everyone else finds it odd.

I had my iPod out to look up kanji.

Later they had us write our names. Not just in katakana, but they wanted us to try and make up kanji for our names. Ayaka came up with a four-character compound that could be sounded out as da-ni-e-ru, but it wouldn't really fit on the paper, and those kanji weren't very fun to write. I went with 神裁, because it has the characters for "god" and "judge", and that's the old meaning of my name.

Kilo demonstrating his mad brush skillz.

I wrote the kanji for "baka."
She took it with her.

There were a bunch of pages hanging on the back wall, that Japanese students had hanging there. Some of them were confusing.

So many men.

Teru teru bouzu.

We washed our brushes out afterwards.
I know from experience that this takes FOREVER.

The teacher taught us some of the origins of characters,
like horse (馬) in this case.

Paperweight.

It was all very fun and good and nice. We chose 3 to take with us. We then chose one to leave on display, although I don't know where we displayed them, because I never saw the one I chose again.

And now to go completely off topic.


Futon

This is where I have been sleeping. It is pretty comfy, but also kind of thin, so sleeping on my side hurts my shoulders/hips etc. I still love it though, because it feels like an authentic Japanese experience.

The pillow has little beads in it, that feel like a bunch of plastic drinking straws that have been cut into little pieces. It's a lot more comfortable than it sounds.

This is a futon.

This is not a futon.

That was a pretty short post, I know. I'm sorry. I'm just too busy having the time of my life! I'll try to update more often.