Annie’s first exhibition.

Annie will be gutted that I post this but I had to as it amused me and Kenichi so much.Back in June,Annie started going to shuji(Japanese calligraphy ) classes with the woman next door who happens to be our landlord’s wife.She does the classes for love of calligraphy rather than the money and lets the children just get used to holding the brush.She is always very effusive with her compliments and always very encouraging but doesn’t really offer much instruction.Annie loves going.

At her 2nd or 3rd group lesson,Annie was asked to write the word ”kaze” ,meaning “the wind”,on her paper.I was a bit surprised as usually they spend the first weeks writing the simple stroke meaning “one” in kanji(it is a horizontal stroke and gets them use to the brush and where and where not to use more pressure).But Annie was already writing a word.

Then a few weeks back,Nanami,Sensei,her teacher,popped round to say that Annie’s work  had received a little prize at a local calligraphy contest and her work was to be displayed in our local “city”.So off we trotted and there we saw Annie’s work ;the same one she had done during her first few lessons.It is all squiggly and not in a straight line and  Annie was not a happy bunny when she saw her work on display as it was,in her own words, ”horrible”.

However,Annie was quite excited about the thought of a prize,until she received it last week from her teacher; a tiny glue stick! We couldn’t stop laughing(but obviously not in front of Annie,no no!).But she did get a pretty nice certificate as well,and well,certificates always look cool,don’t they!

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