The Art of Living by Making Art

Jewellery inspired by nature and made by hand.
How I make it, why I make it, the challenges I face and the successes that come my way.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Brain Workout

I have been fascinated by the Japanese aesthetic sense and their arts and culture for a long time, I plan to go there when I have saved up the funds. So when a series of classes in learning Japanese language was offered locally I immediately signed up. What a brain workout! I love it and I am super keen to keep going now the original series of six classes is done. However it really takes a lot of work to start learning a whole new language from scratch, not mention a new alphabet or should I say syllabary. Well three new ones in fact, since Japanese uses three different types of script - Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji - which they seem to mix up at random in sentences. I have pretty much memorized all the Hiragana syllables - I love practising them in my skinny black drawing pen. Now I am starting on the Katakana syllables, I'm leaving Kanji for last as it is the most daunting!

I don't have anyone to practice my (very limited) conversation with, so to hell with it I am just speaking it all out loud to myself, to my husband's amusement! He has at least learned two words - the word for cake (keeki) and the word for cupcake (cupkeeki) - we both laugh at that one.

Meanwhile I have bought some new enamel colours - Japanese ones of course - gorgous pinks and pale blues, deep purple and dark red. I haven't completed any pieces in the new colours yet so here is one I finished a couple of weeks ago.