Wednesday, February 27, 2008

AGE: Skiing and Calligraphy

We have been skiing about every third day in Nozawa Onsen. There is a lot to do in the town, so we have spent more time doing different cultural activities than skiing. Still, here's a picture from yesterday.
As one of our cultural activities, today we had a local expert in calligraphy come to the lodge to teach us how to write Japanese characters.
As if the characters aren't hard enough, it turns out that proper Japanese calligraphy has to be completed in a certain order with just the right pressure and timing. More pressure results in wider marks, while slower movements (which sometimes involves blotting) result in a thicker layer of ink. One example is in the word "dream." "Dream" is two characters. The one on the left is my pathetic attempt and the one on the right was made by our calligraphy teacher. As you might have noticed, parts of her strokes barely appear. That's not sloppiness; it's perfection. The characters are supposed to be written that way. What seemed difficult at first now seems impossible! Still, we continued to ask her to write a few of our favorite words for us to try to duplicate. Here is "nature." The one on the left is hers, the one on the right is mine.
Finally, I realized the one word I really wanted to learn how to write: spirit. The one on top is hers, the one on the bottom is mine. In Japanese, you pronounce it "tama-she."

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