Calligraphy Class

Two weeks ago, I started taking a calligraphy class from a woman who I think might be the sister of my boss at the board of education, I'm not actually sure. Every Tuesday night, I will go to her calligraphy studio over the restaurant her son owns, and practice writing kanji. Right now I'm doing very simple, little kid stuff, because my kanji writing ability is atrocious. It's a lot harder than it looks, calligraphy. It's not just dragging the brush across the page. You have to have the right amount of ink, and hold the brush the right way (vertically, and kind of like you hold your first chopstick, as if you're holding an egg in the palm of your hand). The hardest part for me is sitting with my legs tucked under me for so long (in Japan it's called sitting in seiza, and it's very difficult for foreigners to do). But I'm really enjoying the class. The first day, I spent the whole two hours writing the character for "day" over and over. It looks like this: 日。Looks simple, right? Well, you have to pay attention to how you hold the brush, how much ink you have on the brush, where you bring the brush to a stop, versus just continuing the line, what angle the strokes make, and the proportions of the character. It's really hard! The whole time these elementary school students kept running by to show the teacher these complicated series of kanji they done perfectly. Like, ten year old kids. sigh...