Congratulations, Outer Space, Help!, Nothing

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The other night I attended a shodo class put on by a friend of a friend. Shodo is Japanese calligraphy, or painting kanji, the Chinese characters used in writing. In kanji, each of the thousands of characters has not only a pronunciation but a meaning as well. The art of it is to capture the meaning of the character in the way you paint it.

One of the difficult parts is that you have to follow a certain order when drawing the lines that compose the kanji character, and even go in a specific direction when making the strokes. It was fun to be taught about all of this, though, by university students who were so open and welcoming to the two foreigners.

When it came time to choose our favorite piece from the evening and sign it, we had the great honor of being bestowed with kanji names - foreign words (and names) use a separate alphabet, so my name written in Japanese until now has had no added meaning.

My friend's name was chosen pretty quickly, using characters that included "heart," "dream" and other beautiful things. Then, after a spirited debate, mine was announced:

"congratulations..."

pretty good!

"Outer space..."

Okay, a little strange but it kind of suits me since I'm spacy.

"Help!"

Hmmmm...

"Nothing, or zero..."

Not quite the meanings I was hoping for.

Luckily, someone thought of an alternative later on, which means "congratulations, celebration (Su-zan)." Needless to say I went with that one, and am feeling officially Japanese with my real kanji name.

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