習字！(Calligraphy!)

Yesterday was my first day joining in club activities at my junior high school. Yay! Since I was barred from joining any "dangerous" sports clubs (the school plead insurance concerns. psh.), I eventually settled on joining the "Cultural Activities Club." Their main activity is Japanese traditional calligraphy, or Shuuji.

Excited as I was, I went right out and acquired myself a calligraphy set. This turned out to be much easier than expected because my fellow ALT, Steven, had an old unused set simply lying about in his apartment.

Since it was my first day, the teacher who leads the class, Yamanaka-sensei, showed me how to set up my ink tray and pour in the ink and how to make sure the brush is good and wet. Then she provided me with a stack of blank pieces of paper and a page of model strokes:



This is the most basic stroke in writing Chinese characters, and it's also the character for "one." So for the next hour, I sat quietly at my little table and made the same stroke over and over again: "One. One. One. One." When I finished a page, I would line up next to Yamanaka-sensei with the other students and wait my turn to display my handiwork. She would then take her own brush, dip it in red ink and highlight things I'd done well (red circles) and then demonstrate things I'd done poorly:



It was funny, but every time I carried my sheet of "ones" over to her, she would exclaim "Ah, jouzu! Oh, it's very good!" before proceeding to point out that I had made the exact same mistakes as last time. At last, she proclaimed my work "finished" (suspiciously, right when club time was ending) and rewarded me with a giant red swirl, the Japanese teacher's way of saying "Good work!":



And there they are. My set of glorious "ones." Yamanaka-sensei assured me that when I come to club next week, I'll get to move up to "twos." I am literally panting with anticipation.