Long Time Expat In Japan
I've been writing about how Japan is weird, and how I have come to think of it as not so weird anymore. What I haven't written about is just how beautiful the place is. I don't get out enough. I spend a lot of time - like the rest of us - with my head … Continue reading Japan is Beautiful
The first installment of my "Japan is weird, sort of" posts. As a reminder, these are things I used to find weird, but actually really like, now that I've lived here for 17 years. Bathrooms Twenty five years ago, I saw my first squat toilet. It was a big deal, even a traumatic experience. But … Continue reading Japan is Awesome – the bathroom
I've spent more of my adult life in Japan than in my home country. I came to that realization the other day. It shouldn't have been such a realization. Simply do the math. Assuming 18 as an adult, I've lived 31 years as such (that makes me 49 for the arithmetic challenged). I live in … Continue reading My “Japan is weird – sort of” Series
This month's kanji reads hakugan soushin in Japanese, or baiyan shuangxin in Chinese. Like a lot of these four character sayings, it evokes sense imagery and invites you to fill in the gaps. Hakugan (baiyan) means white goose. Sou (shuang) means frost. And shin (xin) means to believe, to know, to inform. Long story short, when … Continue reading November Shodo
Kanji I wrote earlier about Gan Shinkei (aka Yan Zhenqing) and his writing style. I kind of fell head over heels for this style. Sensei tells me that I will probably rank up with this submission. If so then that would be awesome. Kana has always been better for me, still not sure why. … Continue reading October Shodo
My sensei turned me on to a style of calligraphy based on a famous calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty. Yan Zhenqing (Gan Shinkei in Japanese) was a governor during the Tang Dynasty. Apparently he was pretty wild at the time. His style had really thick vertical lines with thin horizontals. What I wrote here is … Continue reading Yan Zhengqing Style
Kanji has been hard for me. I freeze up. I get stuck in my head, get tense. Thankfully, last month the kanji practice was a more fluid style. More freedom. Below is my kanji for next month (not the one that got me the level up). Still, you can see, I hope, a little more … Continue reading Level Up! Kana 7th kyu
Flew my drone over the town tonight. The future is now. Of the eight people that read this blog, six of them are my good friends from school. The rest are family. I am blessed. These friends and family know me well, some more than I would like to admit 🙂 Some know of the … Continue reading Makuhari From the Air
Finally made it up one level in kanji. It has only taken me... gulp, 7 months to get here. Kind of a long time, but I can feel a big difference in my ability. This last week at my lesson, I had to write a month's worth of kanji, kana, andpenji. While it wasn't great, … Continue reading Kanji – level 9 !
Surprisingly, I leveled up in the kana section of Shodo! Again! This was doubly unexpected because it is both hard for my classmates, or so I'm told, and also because I have never had any formal education in Japanese. I studied Kanji in Chinese, and even took a couple of lessons in Shodo (which they … Continue reading Level Up! Lvl 8 Kana
B.S. Donovan 