世守

I overslept somewhat, being up late the night before, then went into Kyoto. My destination was the Kyoto International House and a free (50¥ for materials) cultural class on Japanese calligraphy, called shodo. There is a class like this offered almost every Saturday, but it's the first time I've made it.

I was very happy I did. When I went into the room, there were about five Japanese women moving about the room, and about the same amount of participants sitting at tables. Some were gaijin like me, but there were a few Japanese as well. We were given brushes and sumi materials, then started with a few simple exercises. I didn't have much problem with these as I've used sumi off/on since I got here. Never a specific class about it's use though, so I was very happy to learn a system of preparing three shades of black and using them in a more structured way.

I practiced some bamboo drawings, did well on the stalks and got some compliments, but the leaves eluded me. Just more practice. I also learned something that made me very happy, my name in Kanji (instead of katakana, セス クレイトン). Well, one translation, as there are many Kanji pronounced Se and many others pronounced Su (the closest Japanese has to a th- sound). So here it is, 世守, 'sesu', which means 'world/life protector'. So I've got that going for me. The woman probably has lots of experience doing this for foreigners, as she selected Kanji of positive meaning.

I also enjoyed chatting with the women and another Japanese man, Syunpei, sitting at the table with me. As always, I got many wide eyes when I told them I was there studying nihonga. Talked more with Syunpei on the way out. He's a post-doc student studying Physics. His English is very good, and I promised I would try to help him learn more about American humor. Cross-cultural humor is always hard to understand, I sure don't understand what's funny to the Japanese.