今日の習字、JLPT、など。

難しかった！ Three two-character sets for 連綿, then five or six variants of り in 変体仮名, then 楷書 (for me, 寒鳥喧). My renmen and hentaigana weren't nearly as good as they've been in practice during the week, but that may well be because I've been less critical on my own. ;-) Kaisho can be exhausting, much more tiring than gyousho 行書 or sousho　草書, because every stroke has to be just so—entrance, movement, ending, etc. Even doing just three or four characters at a time, as we are now, can be a real commitment. My 寒 and 鳥 are OK (though just barely) and coming along; I had no corners whatsoever today and will have to work on that, among other things. (May have been the brush I was using, 翔雲, but I need to be able to make it work regardless.)

The real problem for me in this set is 喧; tough to align the character well when the first thing you have to write is the hen (口, kuchi), in the middle of blank space, and that commits you to the spacing of the more complex tsukuri (宣, sen). So, as is often the case, you can ruin the character almost before you begin, by beginning your 口 in such a way that no possible adjustment of the 宣 alignment/spacing will make the end product look decent. And, of course, it has to align horizontally with the other characters and vertically with its space on the page....ムズカシイ。 沢山練習したほうね。

A real difficulty with writing kaisho, for me, is that sometimes I get so intense with the individual strokes that I lose sight of the overall spacing, alignment, and feel of the character—ie, I end up with some good strokes and some strokes that need work, but no unified kanji or set of kanji. I guess it's a good thing that I can usually recognize when my writing looks really amateurish; part of the process is learning to distinguish good work from bad, even when it's my own.

JLPT tomorrow. N3. I have practically no hope of passing it, so I'll study as much as I can tonight and then just have the experience of taking it. 聴解 alone will probably sink me. But しょうがない。