Excusemimasen, have you seen my wabi-sabi?: 06/26/10

Last weekend I biked quite a ways down Kamogawa, to the Kyoto International Community House in the Higashiyama area of town. Note to self: rain ponchos are feeble against the might of summer torrential downpours. When I arrived at KICH about half an hour before the shodou class, I was completely soaked. After checking at the desk for the the room number, I wandered around the surrounding area for a bit, but not far enough to manage a temple visit before the class.

At first, it was just the two lady instructors and myself for a while. We exchanged introductions, and they had me pick out a kanji to practice. Matsutake looked like fun, so I went with it. The first kanji, 松 (matsu), means "pine tree," and the second, 茸 (take), by itself refers to "mushroom." The older lady showed me how to write it: first the stroke order, than the variances in pressure of the lines. She taught me how to write it with dark, heavy lines...I kind of want to learn the thin, light, smokey sort-of hand in calligraphy, but I suspect it's more difficult, and it's probably better as a beginner to keep a heavy hand.

This gentleman, a master calligrapher who dropped in a little while after the class started, helped me figure out my name in kanji. On my school papers and official documents, my name is written in katakana, the Japanese phoenetic alphabet used for words and names of foreign origin: ロー・エリン. When Western names are written in kanji, there are two options: translate the name's meaning into Japanese or use kanji which match the name phonetically. I'd already had specific characters in mind for my first name, although I was still trying to choose between two possibilites: 絵林 or 絵鈴. 絵 (e, pronounced "eh") is the Japanese word for a picture, painting, or drawing. 林 as a word by itself means "woods" and the kun-yomi is hayashi but its on-yomi is rin. The on-yomi for 鈴 is also rin, but its kun-yomi is suzu, meaning "bell." I ended up picking the combination of 絵 and 鈴 for the musicality I suppose...The gentlemen did some searching around on his denshi jisho for a kanji for my surname. In the end, he settled on 炉: excellent discretion on his part, methinks. 炉 only has the on-yomi pronunciation ro, meaning "hearth" or "fireplace" although it can also refer to a furnace or kiln.

After a long while of practicing, I made two careful "final" pieces (pictured above.) It still needs work, but I vastly improved over the course of only an hour of practice, so I felt pretty good. After another hour several more people showed up, although only a couple of them practiced their calligraphy. Mostly at that point everyone was conversing together, and having tea with snacks. Once the time slot for the class ended, I thanked everyone for their help, and biked over to Nanzenji, the nearest temple, to see if I could get in a quick visit.

Nanzenji, built in 1264, is a temple belonging to a sect of the Rinzai school of Zen. Originally the Emperor Kameyama's villa, then called Zenrinjiden, he donated it as a Zen temple in 1291 when he became a monk. Inside the main pavilion is the karesansui Hojo Garden, also called Toranoko watashi, "tiger cubs crossing water," because of the shapes of the rocks. The famous landscape architect Kobori Enshu supposedly designed Hojo Garden, which belongs to a style of garden design developed after the early Edo period in the 1600, with most of the stones and trees arranged together at one side of a large, open, empty space.