Year of the Dragon: 2024 Japanese New Year Greeting Card
Greetings to all. I hope this year brings you all the best! 2024 is the year of the 辰 (Dragon) in the Chinese zodiac. The dragon is a powerful and majestic creature that has been revered in Japan for centuries. It is a symbol of good luck, strength, and wisdom. In Japan, it is customary to send New Year's greeting card called "年賀状(nengajo)", to family, friends, and business associates. Nengajo typically feature images of the year's zodiac animal, as well as traditional
Shakyo (by calligraphy) gives us mindful time
Shakyo is a Japanese word that refers to the activity of copying Buddhist sutra texts by hand, using Japanese calligraphy. I believe that doing Shakyo is a unique experience and can be one of the mindful times. We can do Shakyo anywhere if we have some writing tools such as pen and paper. However, it is a refreshing time to work on writing sutra texts in a different place than usual. What is Shakyo (写経)? Today, I would like to share my
What we need for Shakyo (by calligraphy)
In the previous article, Shakyo experience, I explained what Shakyo is. I'm now going to introduce you to what we'll need to do prepare in order to do Shakyo. Brush Since Shakyo, copying sutra tesxts, is required to write a series of small letters, the brush needs to be thin. There are some brushes made specifically for Shakyo. Paper Shakyo paper has a certain format. As sultra texts are written vertically, the paper has lines ruled vertically and at regular intervals in advance so
Shakyo experience
Do you know what "Shakyo" is? Shakyo is a Japanese word that refers to the activity of copying Buddhist sutras by hand. Sha (写) means copying and Kyo (経) means sutras. The reason I mention Shakyo here is because it's the act of transcribing text with a brush, which is another form of Japanese calligraphy. I recently had an opportunity to attend a Shakyo session at a temple in Tokyo and had a very fulfilling time. I would like to introduce
Japanese font and kanji generators
If you have an opportunity to create your own website (business and private) or printables, and you want to add Japanese calligraphy characters or kanji, there are several Japanese/Kanji font generators available online. I'd like to introduce some that seem to be interesting; FREE JAPANESE FONTS Over 200 Japanese fonts including kanji, hiragana, katakana available. You will be able to find very rare fonts. KANJI NAME GENERATOR You can enter your name in English and it will be converted to Japanese kanji