Calligraphy

 This weekend, we practiced some Japanese calligraphy!  Our coordinator at work, Ms. Yamada, and her family graciously invited us into their home so that we could learn from her grandfather. He has been doing calligraphy for over 50 years, and his work is quite beautiful. So we spent a nice few hours learning that calligraphy is a rather difficult art form, and having lunch with our hosts.

Here I am standing over my first attempt, and probably the most successful of the days work. We started out with the simpler japanese writing system of hiragana, in which is much easier to achieve a pleasing result. It's not by any means easy, but because these characters are so few, (only 42) and they form the building blocks of written Japanese, I have much more practice in forming the shapes.

This stands in contrast with the other "half" of Japanese writing, kanji, literally Chinese characters imported from the continent along with buddism and much else. If you're familiar with Chinese writing, you'll know it to be a rather intimidating and complex collection of vaguely pictographic characters.

After studying them for a number of years now, and using them in everyday communication, they are no longer strange nor meaningless, but writing them beautifully even with a pencil is no mean task. Calligraphy was an exceptional challenge, and one which I have not yet surmounted.

Our sensei blots the ink from our work. Japanese people are surprisingly sprightly in old age.

Our teacher attempts to guide Simeon's clumsy hands. Well, we all were pretty clumsy.

 If you're unfamiliar with japanese, you might be vaguely impressed with my attempts. But I assure you, my calligraphy captures none of the grace and beauty of our teacher's.

Me signing my name in the third type of Japanese script reserved primarily for words of foreign origin.

I manged to grab some of the blotting papers before our teacher used them. He may think them garbage, but they are the everyday exercises of a master and I find them rather beautiful.

 After our vain attempts at calligraphy, we had a wonderful homemade lunch by Yamada-san's mother.
I really felt spoilt today, as I often do, by the kindness of everyone we meet. The Meal was delicious, and our teacher, though his Japanese to me was unfamiliar and archaic, was wonderful company. And of course with Simeon, there's never a dull moment, his command of the Japanese language always seems to lend it self to wonderful jokes.

 

A wonderful afternoon spent with the Yamada family! I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to try out some calligraphy in Japan, and to top it off, realizing my particular affinity and interest in painting, Yamada-sans grandfather made me the wonderful and generous gift of the few necessary tools for calligraphy, including brushes, ink stone and even a few hundred sheets of (washi?) paper.