I’ve had a phrase stuck in my head for awhile now that I’ve been wanting to write in Japanese calligraphy. The trouble is, I don’t know how to write Japanese characters and Naoto–my live-in teacher–works all the time. So when he came home from work unexpectedly early last Thursday afternoon, I jumped at the chance to break out my calligraphy supplies. Naoto was really excited. (Not really, but he was a good sport…and in the end, I think he had a good time, too.) 
Naoto gave me tips on making my characters look better and left me with a good reference to work from. Over the weekend, I put away the brushes and inks and instead practiced with markers. I need to focus on confidently forming the characters so that eventually I will be able to focus on controlling the brush strokes. It’s a lot harder than it looks! Naoto makes it look so easy–it’s not!! 
Even though my characters were far from perfect, Naoto wrote encouraging messages on my work and we have another lesson planned soon.
Tomorrow, I’ll share a little bit about our calligraphy supplies. Most of them are handed down from Naoto’s mom whose sister was a calligraphy teacher.
kimberly ah 
Looks challenging!
[…] the stroke of the brush. I think this is a crazy beautiful sentiment, even though, from looking at my brushstrokes, you can tell my soul is intensely nervous and unsure about calligraphy. A calligraphy brush is […]
I can’t wait to hear about the class you’ll be taking in Japan. I would love the opportunity to learn Japanese calligraphy, but for now I’ll have to live vicariously through you!
We found a local teacher on a bulletin board in Mitsuwa. Depending on how my 1 tiny lesson goes, I might have to look into it (but if I remember correctly, it seemed really expensive…)
[…] experience to know when the ink is ready. (Our ink was not the right consistency when we had our practice session. You can tell it wasn’t mixed long enough because it was gray and a bit watery. We need more […]