Shoudou.

Last week, one of the teachers invited me to her shoudou (Japanese calligraphy) class. It took me the entire 50 minutes to draw this one kanji character. They showed me how to prepare the materials, use the brush, do the strokes, etc etc etc and then I practiced for a while before she put down a sheet and said, "Okay. Now do today's best." And this is it: 花 (hana), "flower." The writing on the side is my name: エリオット(eriotto), "Elliot."

Today was my second visit to the shoudou class. The teacher allowed me to choose my own kanji. I wanted to draw "strong will," but she said it was too difficult, so we decided upon this: 気 (ki), "spirit." You can see a small mistake I made at the bottom right, but otherwise I think this is better, especially because of the ink. Last week I used black ink out of a bottle and this week I made my own ink with a charcoal-like stick and water, which goes on much smoother. Don't you think so? (I like to try to sound like I know what's going on).