shodo...getting into Japanese calligraphy

Recently I am getting back into calligraphy...it is a good way to exercise one's brain, write Chinese characters more beautifully, zone out into zen, and learn more Chinese characters without being bored to death by stupid kanji flashcards. (ha ha, can you tell I am frustrated at the darn cards?)

We have a volunteer teacher come out to a calligraphy club member's house and for two hours we drink tea/coffee, eat some snacks and practice writing. For the first lessons I made dots and simple horizontal strokes for the WHOLE two hours. Ha ha...and the funniest thing is, even after that time, I could not master it.

It is very hard to do calligraphy beautifully...one must have good sense of balance, be able to control the ink flow, and concentrate on the word. My friend Yuri (who kindly addressed our wedding envelopes!) can do it sooo well - she's an expert with a calligraphy brush.

My goal is to do calligraphy until my Chinese characters do not look like that of a 5-year old child's!!! Recently we sent a thank-you card to Hiro's former orchestra colleague...and his colleague laughed and was so pleased to see my child-like writing, both kanji and hiragana. I suppose if my writing provokes so much laughter, I should not change it. Laughter is after all, very good medicine for the soul!

Anyway if you have some time and want to fall into the zen zone, why don't you try it out?! Though Japanese brushes are not ideal for writing romanized characters - straightlined Chinese characters (kanji) are the best.