Calligraphy

I joined the calligraphy club today. Kasukabe's calligraphy teacher, Inomoto sensei, is well-known and even has some of his work displayed in the National Museum in Tokyo! After talking to Mr. Suzuki, we went to see the calligraphy teacher. He said that I should come to one of his classes before deciding. I ended up swapping maths for calligraphy ;).

After a long speech by the teacher in half-japanese half-japlish (i probably just made that up) about the origins of chinese-characters, how 'nihon' stands for 'land of the rising sun' and lots of laughter, I got to draw my first kanji, 'nihon'. I did so unbelievably bad it's not funny. The teacher said he was really impressed but I'm not sure wether that was just politeness (it's very hard to tell with Japanese people). Anyways I went to another calligraphy class after that, my calligraphy skill improving marginally, but not much. Inomoto sensei gave me a brush at the end and told me that the calligraphy club started at 4pm each evening.

some samples of what there was to see at the calligraphy club

The club started with a selection-process for some exhibition. The scrolls (I have no idea what you call them) that students made are awesome! After that, one student helped me with drawing some characters (friend and stone) and gave me lots of advice. The quality of my work slowly improved. At 5 o'clock, we set up a table tennis table by pushing two tables together and using books for the net. We played table tennis for another hour before leaving for home. I can't wait for tomorrow and another day in the calligraphy club.

On the way back, I checked the local computer superstore, Laox, for any news on the iPod Shuffle (which i am going to buy as soon as i can). Unfortunately they didn't have any news so I guess it will still take some time.. :(

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