Lovely Kochi Nature

Kochi is a decent city but of course much smaller than Osaka, Tokyo or Kyoto. It's surrounded my small villages in the rest of Kochi prefecture. Every week I drive to Nankoku City (about 20min. outside Kochi) to teach English to a group of business men at the Casio watch company. Many of the nature photos are from Nankoku or just outside downtown Kochi.


the river in Kochi at night

This is very common in Japan, very old people with very curved backs. I've asked students if this is caused by osteoperosis (but there's a lot of calcium in fish bones?) or just too much farming, day after day, year after year. No one knows... I don't see this condition so much in America.

Rice picking season is over. This rice is getting ready fro winter (turning brown :))

Persimmon (kaki), very popular seasonal fruit. I've gotten many from my students.





I want to be a Japanese farmer in my next life...but I only want to work 2 days a week :)


Buddha and the 7 Dwarfs (+ pikachyou and Santa)


Cosmos flower field

Shodo (Japanese calligraphy)

In need of some kind of artistic release/expression, I've started studying shodo, or Japanese calligraphy. It sort of found me because one of my students at Hello School is a shodo master and asked me if I'd like to try it. I did, and I love it! It's amazing how you can communicate so many emotions through one Kanji. It's also really helping me with my line quality and I've started practicing suibokuga (painting with just the Japanese black ink "sumi").

I'm very luck to have found Junko (my sensei) and her husband Yoshichi, they've been like my host family here. They are very generous and always willing to teach me new things about their culture.

kin (gold) moku (ground)
hana (flower)

Junko sensei

Some of Junko's brushes. You can't tell from the photo but they are about 2 feet long and cost around $2000.

practice


kokoro(heart) yumi (dream)

homesick

I miss my Mommy. I wanna make cookies with her this Christmas...