Graduation 卒業

Congratulations to Mathieu, who, in seven lessons altogether, has proceeded to go-dan; that is, Level Five. Level Five is marked by the first time we actually progress to have an unscripted, unaided conversation (no crib notes, nothing to look at), the content of which is my choosing.

This time, I chose a typical conversation in which I asked him about his last week and what he did during in it. He managed to inform me that he finished some tests in university which was a big weight off his shoulders, and that he had not had time to do anything of note that was fun on his couple of days away from school, because he worked.

This tested his working knowledge and usage of the past tense, knowledge of relatively simple vocabulary (but not simple to a beginning student) and demonstrated his mastery of all the topics we had covered in class to this point.

His reward was a yukata (the white robe pictured) and when he passes his yoh-dan (fourth level) in about two months (another 8 lessons or so) I should be able to track down a jacket such as the one he is wearing in photograph #2, which unfortunately is mine and not for the giving away of which. Ever. because THAT jacket was my passing of the Dai-Ichi-oku-dan (the one-millionth level) which is unattainable except for the dligentest of the diligentest of the most diligent acolytes of the Nihingo no tenshin-dan 日本語の天神団 (Heavenly God Level), which, nonetheless awaits the he/she who masters the 600 prescribed verbs and Four Ancient Command Line Interfaces, which, needless to say, is quite difficult.

But not impossible. Congratulations, Mathieu-san; from here on in you shall be addressed as マッシュウウテッキュウ巻きちゃん.

マッシュウウテッキュウ巻きちゃん

将来の天神団

Ziss Iz-u Mai Fazaa

If Japanese teachers had their way . . . .

Kanji and iOS: Gripes

Kanji and iOS. N'e'r the twain shall meet.

Oh sure, there are plenty of apps for "learning" kanji. But so many of them are just plain LAME.

I don't need to "recognize" what a kanji is and what it means. Well, I do, but I also want to be able to WRITE a kanji, then have the iPad/whatever tell me not only whether I wrote it correctly, but how it SHOULD be written, if at all differently -- here, where a SINGLE NIT of a line can make the complete difference between meanings.
Take, for a great example, 牛 -- ushi, meaning "cow" -- and 午 -- go,  meaning "noon." ONE TINY EXTENDED LINE and we have a completely different word.

Well, have a look at THIS:  同 -- 何 -- 伺. The first, "onaji," means "same." The second, "nani," means "what." And the third, "ukagau," means "inquire." Whaaaaa????? To the untrained (AND trained!) eye, they look virtually identical. An extra blob here, a tiny extension there -- and they are totally different words. It's as if I wrote the letter "A" as "A," "A" and "A" and they all were pronounced completely differently.

So far, I can find not a single app that takes into account the writing of kanji and the learning of kanji. There is no app, for example, where you can WRITE two kanji to form a compound (word) which will recognize it as such.

So, for example, 英語, which just means "English," is not possible to write as two kanji ("EI" and "GO") and be recognized by the app.

So you can only learn kanji one by one, and badly, at that. The pathetic programs that DO allow you to write kanji just allow you to draw in thin, unchanging lines that don't reflect the stroke angle, where it begins and ends, so you could be writing it upside down as far as stroke order goes and the program wouldn't know the difference. Other apps are so strict that if you mis-write a single stroke by a hair -- leaving, say, the end of one line unbent as it would be with a brush, it refuses to recognize the entire kanji at all.

So far, the iPad and kanji studies are, uh, "Kan't Ji."

Goal: 20 Kanji Today

Think I can do it? I mean, kanji that I have never studied before/can't recognize if I see it.

I'll let you know, plus which ones they were.

Note, two days later: I did a lot more than 20 kanji. On my iPad I have now recorded about 70 kanji (which means I researched them, wrote them out and put each on its own page with comments).

Those were all from the 2nd Year of Kokugo (Japanese language) that all Japanese kids have to do. The total for year 2 is 160 kanji. I already know the 80 from the first year, so I'm not bothering to record them. But that means I'm up to about 140 kanji, of about which I can actually write from memory about half that, plus read all from memory, plus know probably 90% of all their Onyomis (Chinese readings used in compound words) and probably 100% of the Kunyomis (the Japanese readings and pronunciations -- probably 50% of which are verbs or adjectival verbs.

When I get a chance, I will assemble the entire list and post it, so you will know what is theoretically POSSIBLE for one person to learn in a specific timeframe, which should give you a pretty good guide as to how much you can expect to do.

A Bit Of History

A portrayal of a "good" Jesuit priest in the 
mini-series Shōgun. In reality, there weren't many "good" priests.

I've always told my students that I consider understanding the Japanese culture almost as important as understanding their language, and I meant it.

At the moment I'm reading a history of Japan called "A History of the Japanese People From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era" by Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi, published in 1912 or so.

You may or may not have an inkling about how the people of the West came to Japan, and you may recall that Japan pretty much shut down the country for over 200 years -- neither letting anyone in nor letting anyone out -- a period which became known as the Tokugawa Jidai, or Tokugawa Era.

Why they did so is actually an amazing story. And you should know about this period of Japan's history, because, a bit like North Korea today, they became so isolated as to create a unique experiment, the subjects of which were several million unwilling participants.

But it led in many ways to how they are today -- you owe the vastly different Japanese ways of thinking in large part to this period of enforced isolation, and you need to know the reasons why this isolation came about.

I'll have to ultra-simplify things a bit, but in a large part, it was due to the persistent machinations of the Portuguese and the Spanish, who simply would not let sleeping dogs lie in their attempts to convert Japan en masse to Christianity.

At first, welcoming the associated trade, the powers that were at the time -- various daimyōs, shōguns and other potentates, accepted these zealots wholeheartedly, building them churches, allowing whole populations to adopt Christianity, even becoming Christians themselves.

But the Portuguese and the Spanish's motivations were far more devious than the conversion of a few "savages." Under direct orders from their governments, they were to infiltrate Japan by first converting the masses, then seizing the country as their own possession.

I kid you not. This, they assiduously did for over a hundred years. Someone who put a spike in their wheel, however was someone with whom you might have a nodding acquaintance -- "That Guy" who was the hero in that epic TV series "Shōgun" (actually Richard Chamberlain).

This person was a real Englishman named Will Adams, who almost singlehandedly turned the Shōgun at the time, Tokugawa Ieyasu, against the Portuguese and the Spanish by simply revealing the true motives behind the conversion of the Japanese to Christianity.

It's a thrilling tale, but the end result was that Ieyasu's son, Hidetada, was none too happy about the Portuguese and the Spanish, who kept creeping back to Japan despite being thrown out, and devising pathetic plans to overthrow the Shōgunate -- plans almost too pathetic to list here -- and proceeded to subject the perpetrators and all their Japanese followers to the most hideous of deaths -- being boiled and roasted alive (slowly!) or being torn limb from limb -- things only a 16th-century warlord could dream up.

And then he sewed up the country. He allowed one tiny port where foreigners could come and trade, and they weren't even allowed to leave their little island to cross the bridge to the mainland. For hundreds of years. Even foreign ships that were accidentally shipwrecked on Japanese shores during this Great Silence were ripped to shreds, the occupants dying the most ghastly of deaths.

All because of . . . you guessed it: religion.

William Adams, like many Englishmen of his era, didn't have the slightest interest in religion -- he only wanted trade. He, of course, lived out his life in Japan in superb and princely fashion, accorded the highest of honors that could only be bestowed on Japanese nobles, and the Portuguese and the Spanish . . . well, we all know where they are today.

That's worth a couple of Hail Marys, wouldn't you say?

Behold the Beauty of Kanji

Here is the character for "house." It is basically the symbol for a pig, under a roof. Do not these beautiful forms, in all their diversity, stir something within you? They sure do me. I do believe I am going to take up 習字 (shūji.) In case you didn't know, the first character of this word is the word for "learn" and the second is for "letter." Any one of my students worth their salt has already learned the verb 習う, meaning "to learn," whose onyomi (Chinese reading) is "shū."

My New Fonts

Aren't these absolutely gorgeous fonts? They're from my new collection of 1,000 Japanese fonts and some of them are just amazingly beautiful.

Here is a proverb rendered in the new fonts. Sorry, don't know what the proverb says. Maybe it says "Aren't these fonts incredible?"

Teaching English . . . Again?

I haven't taught any English to anyone since about 1993. I've been teaching Japanese now for about 4-5 months. I'm extremely comfortable teaching Japanese. I have no shortage of lessons. I don't use a textbook -- I just teach according to what I think the student at the particular time needs to know. I adjust my teaching to how they're doing, how well they understand -- lots of variables.

But English?

Believe it or not, I was recently contacted by an extremely amiable Japanese man, around 36 years old, who just moved to Montreal a couple of months ago. His story is complicated, but basically, his wife is Russian and is completely fluent in Japanese. They have two small children.

If I'm not mistaken, they came here from Japan. Like I said, his story is so unusual and complicated, I really haven't quite digested everything he's told me so far. I met him yesterday, and -- yes, you're reading it right -- he wants me to teach him English.

I asked him why on earth he'd want someone who speaks Japanese to teach him English, but he has a huge point, one I've been harping on to anyone who ever wants to listen: Read My Lips: I'm only going to say it 1,000 times.

If a student of a language does not even understand the simplest sentence in that language -- is at the level of, or lower than, "This is a pen," THERE IS NO POINT IN HELL TRYING TO TEACH THEM IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE.

In other words, if 90% of my Japanese students came to my class, and I started babbling in Japanese -- ONLY speaking Japanese and not a word of English, as some "educators" highly recommend, they would LEARN NOTHING AT ALL.

When cI was teaching English in Japan, some of my students knew about as much English as you or I know Navajo. Trying to teach them Navajo IN Navajo would have been a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

Thus, I always want to laugh when I am subject to a Japanese teacher (it's been a long time since I took Japanese lessons, and that was with regular students of Japanese at McGill, not some YMCA evening course) who decides to teach the lesson entirely in Japanese.

It's such a TOTAL waste of time that they should be physically removed from the classroom and be restrained from ever teaching again.

Yes, for sure -- teaching a 5th year Intermediate/Advanced Japanese class entirely in Japanese is highly recommended. But to a bunch of people who can barely say "Watashi?"

Well, it seems that Kawakami-san (his name, delightfully, means "River God") has exactly the right idea.

It's MUCH easier if he takes English lessons from me than from someone who neither speaks, understands, or has any interest in the Japanese language. BECAUSE I WILL KNOW WHEREOF HE IS UP AGAINST, and I will be able to patiently explain difficult concepts to him in terms of Japanese, such as, say, "filler words" in English as opposed to filler words in Japanese. I will get this across to him 100 times faster than someone who speaks no Japanese and therefore WASTES HIS PRECIOUS TIME AND MONEY trying to stumble through a simplified English explanation.

It would be like you suddenly being stranded on a desert island, and a native appears.

Sure, you COULD go through Hell and high water trying to explain where you had come from, that you were hungry, thirsty, needed some medical help and access to a phone, using universal gestures and hand signals -- maybe after a half hour of this he might grunt and lead you to the local zoo, but wouldn't it be much easier if he said "Hey dude, don't worry about a thing! I'll take care of ya."

?

So, Kawakami-san, in his infinite wisdom, has made an incredibly sagacious choice. In fact, I am probably the ONLY PERSON in Montreal who has taught English to Japanese in Japan and is now teaching Japanese to English and French speakers. So in a way, you might say he's hit the jackpot.

There's only one big problem: I've totally forgotten how to teach English. And you can squelch that guffaw. YOU try teaching English to someone who barely understands a simple phrase. I guarantee you and your student will have a fantastically frustrating time.

We're Not The Only Ones

It seems that in this age of computers, even those originators of kanji, the Chinese, are forgetting how to write their own letters.

That's a great comfort to me as I struggle to learn kanji and have to write them all down. Now the people who made the damn things up will have to do the same thing.

Yay, I think.

One Thousand Japanese Fonts!

Yes, I went ahead and bought a CD off eBay of 1,000-odd Japanese fonts. They seem to be a mixture of TrueType and OpenType fonts, but the most important thing is that most of them installed very happily onto my MacBook Pro running OS 10.8.5!

Yay! Here's a quick and dirty sample . . . I just typed up one sentence and then selected fonts somewhat at random from among the hundreds and hundreds that appeared in my font list. There were a couple of really amazing ones (one I've boxed in light blue; it's the top line in the right-hand column).

I will henceforth never be at a loss if I want to create some dynamic new graphic involving Japanese fonts!

Incidentally, if you want these fonts, just let me know. I'm sure I can post a zipped version to my server or just send a file by email.

Right click to open this in a new window so you can zoom in!

iPad and Kanji Resources

Sorry for the poor quality of the video. It's hard to hold a camera and push buttons and write kanji at the same time. But you get the picture.


List of apps etc. mentioned here:

● Jishop (very good for finding radicals or kanji by direct stylus/finger input; great resource for stroke order -- in general, overall the best kanji resource I have found so far)
● Kanji LS (Lets you take tests according to the grades for Japanese kids, or also JLPT. In general, very annoying because it shows you just how many kanji you don't know. You can input with finger/stylus.)
● Midori (Excellent all-around kanji resource. Too many great functions to list here. If you only have one, have this.)
● Brushes 3 (Not recommended.)
● Duke Pen (not specifically for kanji, but there is NO sketchpad specifically for recording kanji. Seems to have done a good job so far. I just want a record of all the kanji I know how to write and read so I can go back and review.)

Others I have but don't use so much:

● JEdict (Finger/stylus input. Cleans up your lines as you draw them. Very intuitive. I'd put this number three in the usefulness category.)
● Imiwa (Very good resource to look up kanji by grade or JLPT level. Gives you every possible reading, including Chinese and Korean. Very clean, pleasant interface. As far as I can tell, no user input, but it gives great stroke order examples.)
● KanjiQ (Pretty good, lets you input, but won't search based on your input. Good for practicing stroke order, clean interface.)

Some that are marginal:

Try to avoid gimmicky programs that group kanji into decks or flashcards. They're difficult to figure out and in the end don't teach you any faster than the hands-on ones listed above.

● Kanji Pivot (Based on flashcard-type groupings. Frustrating to figure out how to use properly. If you like flashcards, this might be for you. No input.)
● Kanji Stories (Good for listing all the kanji you don't know. Gives you a field in which to input some kind of mnemonic "story" for each kanji. Not for me, but maybe for you. No input.)
● Scribe Origins (Most unusual of the entire bunch. Very strange interface. Very game-like, has multiple-choice quizzes, flash decks etc. Could be good if you like playing games. Not very practical, at least for me.)

A lot of these apps advertise as "Free" or are very low priced, but you will quickly find that in order to do "X" you have to upgrade, or perhaps just to get rid of ads. To me, this is just deceitful. If your app is good, charge a good price for it -- don't lure people in and then charge them for "features" that are advertised in the descriptions.

(One resource that I'm mentioning here is not for kanji, but is for learning Japanese. It exists as a free online resource, but also comes as a free app for iOS. This is one of the best Japanese grammar books that I have read since I have been studying Japanese [going on 30 years]. Do the author a favor and support him by buying his book from Amazon.)

As for styluses (properly called "stylii"): There don't appear to be any huge standouts. Using a stylus is far better than using a finger, in my opinion; the most elementary reason being that you won't be writing too many kanji with your finger. As a general observation, they are all very, very bad. Ideally, they would be pressure-sensitive and have some sort of matched drawing/writing app that would use these abilities natively. At this point in the game, I have yet to come across anything that remotely fits this description. There might be dedicated separate "Artpads" (that's what they used to be called in the Dark Ages of computing -- 1995-2000) but I cannot see how one of these could interface with an iPad -- a laptop, maybe, but that is a whole different barrel of monkeys.

I found a stylus called a Trent Arcadia which is lightyears better than the almost hopeless Wacom Bamboo, which you should avoid like the plague. The Trent is slightly better -- more responsive, not like trying to write with a tampon for lab rats as is the Wacom. More like writing with a wet Q-Tip.

For our purposes, namely, some kind of brush-like stylus that maybe has a companion drawing app, where you can specify brush types and thicknesses, that is pressure-sensitive, well, that's like looking for Jesus in a topless bar. I think it's safe to say this does not yet exist, at least for iOS devices. Unless you know of one!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: some of these apps with come in Android (Midori does, for sure) or MUST have some kind of doppelgänger for Samsung Galaxies and such like. Sorry, Windows/Android dudes and dudettes, you're on your own! Happy hunting!

If anyone has recommendations for any good hardware of software, PLEASE leave a comment -- the more input we get, the better.

Henry Li Carves Me Three Special-order Japanese Seals

I may or may not have mentioned my interest in Japanese stone seals. What these are are probably recognizable to you as that square red thing that appears on traditional Chinese paintings -- well, they of course also appear on Japanese ones.

They are the signature of the artist, usually containing the three or four syllables of their name, sometimes in a highly stylized cursive form of kanji (Chinese characters) that hails from the origins of kanji. They are extremely beautiful, and when I went to Japan this summer and stopped in at a printer's place near my hotel in Nara, I remarked upon these square, large stamps that were very different from the usual inkan that all Japanese carry; it's kind of like a permanent signature, usually their name in modern kanji in a self-inking stamp. People rarely have them custom-made -- a self-respecting shop will already have their name on an inkan, so they're cheap and convenient.


But I wanted the artist's version, which is always square or rectangular, as opposed to ordinary daily-use inkan, and usually must be special ordered. As you can imagine, these can set you back a pretty penny.

I thus decided I would order the materials and do them myself, not having a clue what I was getting myself into. I wanted to carve my son's name into a name seal (called rakkan) so he could stamp his Japanese calligraphy works with it instead of some cheap plastic round one.

I ordered the materials -- soapstone and carving tools -- and set to work, inspired by Henry Li's YouTube videos.

Henry works out of Southern California and does custom name seals as well as traditional Chinese calligraphy and paintings. He's an absolute genius at the carvings, which is evident from his videos.

So I, thinking it was going to be a breeze, tried to carve a seal according to Henry's videos.

It was an utter disaster. Henry makes it look like child's play -- child's play it is not.

Not even bothering to try a second one, I sent the stones and the designs to Henry to have him carve them for me. I sent three stones, only intending to have two done, but he gave me such a great price for all three that i could not resist. And then he made not one, but THREE videos for YouTube about my son's name seals.

Let me tell you, making videos as professional as Henry's is not for the novice. His videos look like they were filmed by a cinematographer on a film set, so you can imagine how blown away I was when he put them up on YouTube.

Here then, are the three videos Henry made. I strongly urge you to consider getting your own stone seal. Henry's talents would seem to command large sums of money, but they do not. They're incredibly reasonable.

Before you go contacting him, please tell him that Nick sent you, and he'll probably lop off a nice percentage for you. But just do it.

THANK YOU, HENRY!!!!!!! When I talk to Tai-chan in my video chat I will ask him to record his thanks. He's going to freak out when he gets these seals, as are his family and all his friends.

Why No New "Kanji a Day?"

I was supposed to be posting all the kanji I'm learning every day in this space. But you know what? I'm jumping around too much. I'm not doing them in a particular order, and so far, about 90% of them, I actually did study while I was in Japan, all those years ago.

I underestimate how many I studied; I must have gone through at least 500 while I was there, at least, recognition-wise. Now all that is required is to drum all these up from memory, and learn how to write them -- that I never learned to do -- just to read them -- and memorize all their readings.

But it's basically a job of catch-up. I know so many that fall outside the realm of "Year one," "Year Two," etc. that it's pointless learning them again in order.

Writing them has just become easier, thanks to a couple of iPad apps that I highly recommend, plus a stylus. I use JiShop for kanji recognition and a bit of handwriting; you can pen in a radical and it will automatically list all the kanji with that radical (but you have to be pretty precise with your penwork) -- and it will look those kanji up and give definitions, readings and compounds for them, plus break them down and give you three different examples of stroke order. Highly recommended. I think it's less than ten bucks, but worth ten times more.

Then there is Midori, which is a great app that also lets you write kanji, except it's even more picky than JiShop, so it really gets your stroke order in gear.

That's another thing I realize I took from my earlier Japanese kanji studies -- I must have learned how to use the correct stroke order, because to write a character like 口 requires you to throw away everything you've been taught about drawing things, because just this box has an odd stroke order (only three strokes makes the whole box) that just wouldn't occur to you if you weren't taught it. And that stroke order applies EVERY time you have to draw a box, which is OFTEN.

And I have to admit, writing kanji is half-writing, half-drawing, which is definitely an odd thing to do for us Westerners.

My stylus is a useless piece of shit -- a Wacom Bamboo -- but I suspect anything you get is going to be a pathetic stand-in either for a pen or a brush. Since then, I got a Trent Arcadia from Amazon, which has yet to arrive, but I suspect despite the good reviews it will be very similar to the Wacom.

Still, I'm plugging away -- since I wrote the last post on kanji I must have mastered at least 20 more kanji. So get to work, people, 'cause we're gonna have a test!

Okay, Maybe Japanese When I feel Like It

It takes a lot of energy to write in Japanese, even when all you're doing is typing on a keyboard. Still, you have to think about the grammar, what sounds natural, how would  a Japanese put it, yada yada, and after all Google Translate is really no help. It mangles some sentences so badly that even though I know my Japanese is correct, the translation machine just can't grasp it.

I guess with a language in which subjects are often optional, the computer just can't get the idea of "context" so when you just write something that's typically Japanese, without a subject, like "And often, my students . . ." -- of course, dropping the "my"because I don't need it, because YOU know I'm talking about MY students, as opposed to anybody else's . . . well, the computer doesn't know how to handle that. So it will put something it thinks is correct, like "our" or even "its" (it loves that one, because it gets the computer off so many hooks) which just make the resulting English translation a horror.

At any rate, the topic of this post is that I just watched a documentary, a really fantastic one, about the rather depressing subject of suicide in Japan, but one I think I will make required watching for some of my more advanced students, because it not only is mostly in English, with JAPANESE subtitles, which is a major switch, but because the vocabulary is quite down to earth and not very complicated. Plus, it's done in a typical conversational/polite style which is what we students of Japanese should all be learning, plus it has a lot of those conversational quirks that all languages have, like "y'know," "Ummm," "So then .  ." etc. etc. which are really the key to the back door of learning any language naturally, so this documentary is ideal.

I also found that, just by re-studying kanji as I've been doing in the last two months or so, my reading comprehension level has leaped to unimaginable heights -- sometimes I can read the ENTIRE set of subtitles on the screen, if they didn't go quite so fast.

And if I can do it so can you!

I will download this documentary and watch some bits of it with some of my more advanced students (you'll know who you are) and I think it will give you a lot more bang for your buck than some adolescent animé time-waster.

Okay, Bilingual, Then. じゃあ、バイリンガルだ

Kanji for today (if I have to do it, by gum, so will you)

今日の漢字（一生にがんばろうか？）

万
マン、バン
ばん
10,000

Examples:

三万五千円　（さんまんごせんえん）（san-man-go-sen yen)
35,000 yen (about USD $360.00)

万歳　（ばんざい）(banzai)
Hooray! (lit. 10,000 years)

Not to be confused with  五 （ゴ）(go - five) or 方 （カタ、ほう）(kata, hō - method, way) 

Japanese From Now On ・これから日本語

I've decided that it would be a good thing not only for me, but for you, as learners of Japanese, to write my future blog posts in Japanese. I'm not saying all of them will be in Japanese, but I'm going to try. That will severely test my skills, as written and read Japanese is not at the top of my skills level. But if you ever have any trouble understanding a post, you can always just copy the text and paste it into Google Translate.

Its translation engine is sorely lacking in many respects but you will be able to figure out 90% of what was said.

これから全部このブロッグのポストは日本語で書くつもりです。そのように、私の日本語は上達して、生徒さんたちの読み練習が同時にできます。

もちろん、全部のポストは日本語で書くつもりではないけど、やって見ようと思いました。私にとって、日本語を書くか読むのはそんなに上手じゃないから、早くできるかどうか見るでしょ。

それに、分からなかったら、Google Translate　に行けます。通訳としては、あんまりよくないけど、まあ、私たちの目的としては、じゅうぶんです。

Twenty Kanji in Two Weeks; Can I Do It?

I told you I learned the first 80 kanji as learned by first-year (6-year-old!!) students in Japan, and by "learning" I mean *most* of their readings (on-yomi and kun-yomi), their pronunciations, their various meanings, and the, the hardest part: how to write them.

Before I did this, I knew all of them just by looking at them -- I've known them now for almost 25 years, when I first actually set about studying them. But not how to write them all correctly, or all their readings.

The next batch, the second-year study for Japanese kids (seven years old!!) consists of 120 kanji.

These twenty that you see here are just the first 20 of them. Again, I know all of them simply by looking at them; at least, their meanings. I don't know most of their on-yomis (what they would be pronounced as in compounds, or multi-kanji words) but I basically know most of their usages and kun-yomis (Japanese readings).

And I can write maybe give of the simplest from memory.

So: two weeks from today. Can I do it? Could YOU do it? Let's find out.

Rakkan Seals Done Professionally

Well, I'm proud to say this will be only the second time or so that I have posted identical posts on both this blog and my personal blog.

The story is fairly long-winded: one day I was cruising YouTube as only I can do, using an Apple TV so it just appears on my TV screen instead of having to watch it all pinched on my laptop -- and I came across the fellow below. He is Henry Li, who makes a living in SoCal with his wife Victoria in a busy social world (whirl?) of Asian arts. He himself is an experienced painter, but what caught my attention was these "Seal stones" that I had come across while in Japan this summer. (Now this is a three-blog post!)


You can hear me babbling in the above video about how cool it would be to get a seal stone for my son Taishi, in order to make his "Shodo" calligraphy paintings that much more professional.

So when I got back to Montreal I started looking in to doing it myself -- the carving, that is -- and that's how I ran across Henry and his voluminous YouTube posts on various projects he's worked on (mine will be up there soon!)

I purchased the recommended equipment and then tried my hand at what Henry made look easy. It was a complete and utter failure. The clean lines that he was carving in his videos just came out as a bunch of scratches in my attempt.

I complained to Henry, and he admonished me that of course it wasn't easy -- in fact, it was one of the most difficult Asian art forms. Weeeeellll, THANKS A LOT, HENRY! was my thought when he told me that. But if you think about it, it isn't his fault that he makes it look so easy!

So I gathered up my supplies and basically said to Henry, "Okay, Big Guy, YOU do it." And that's exactly what he did, as you can see . . . I used the money I made teaching Japanese -- not much, but it adds up -- to scrape together enough for Henry not to do just one, but THREE completely different seals! And he gave me a phenomenal price -- at least saving me $75 minimum.

So that's my story. Of course, when he started them, Henry must have finished them in an hour or so, although my painful scratching must have taken an hour just by itself.

I'll let Henry tell you (and show you) the mess I made of my attempt in this video below, and I hope he'll soon be sending me a link to the video he made on MY stones.



I know Tai-chan is going to be blown away, because I certainly am!

The three stones Henry made

When I sent Henry the three stones I had (look at the box at lower left and right next to it) I also sent him a photo of Tai-chan, plus a calligraphy panel Tai-chan made last year. Well, after making the stamps, Henry arranged everything  artistically (see the stamps now on Tai-chan's panel!) and took this beautiful photo. What can I say? I'm blown away!