Murakami Kijo

 The life and works of Murakami Kijo

Japanese resources

 Japanese beginner

Nihongo Now

This book Love to Learn Japanese 2 is a game changer for me with colorful pictures. part of Easy to Learn Japanese series

book 1 excerpt

book 2 excerpt

book 3 excerpt

book 4 excerpt

Junique

 Santoka's Soumoku collection

Junique is not a free-form haiku. It is a new 12-syllable senryu style proposed by Nishizawa Yoka.

Themed reading

 CTsalazar list of poems read at a retirement community

Language learning journey

 When you have  alist of words to learn, itmight not be easy. But if you make sentences with them it gets better. When you understand the basic sentence structure, then all you need to know are the meanings of the new words. Its amazing what everday practice can do. Yesterday I borrowed a Japanese book from a teacher. It was very colorful but I didnt think I could make any inroads with it. But I sat down and started reading it slowly and realised that I could go forward. I started writing down Kanji as the script is cartoonish and less intimidating.

Something beautiful

 Friday morning, while driving I saw two  dried bougainvillea flowers being swept by the wind and thought of a haiku when the gray clouds let a whimpering rain. In the evening, while walking I thought of picking up a few of the flowers by the walkway to model them into a haiga. I was going to a fall festival and knew, I couldnt keep them safe.

Next day morning, when I opened the garage door to go outside, there were two dried bougainvillea. They werent there when I set out for walk the previous evening. But the wind of the car, must have followers.

Japanese painting

 Painting a Japanese Crane with Lian Quan Zhen

Recognizing Japanese letters

 I began my interest in Japanese with trying to look up the original haiku in Japanese after reading English translations. Looking back at the journey so far, when I searched for a translation, I understood that this image had the original that I am looking for. But how do we find the letters. Using google translation and midway letters that I could read, I had to adjust the Japanese text back and forth to finally get:

"誕生と死を見つめる 蓮はすでに 花を 開いた

Tanjō to shi o mitsumeru hasu wa sudeni hana o aita " - Soseki

Many languages

 livonian

Teaching kids Telugu, when I ask them if they know the meaning of the word or what they think it is, then they show it by action and then I have to rack my brain for which word they might be referring to.. but its a win -win, two words at once.

In your microsoft live transcript converter, you can change the language to the language you are learning.

The many books to read Basho

Basho David is a quick read because it is all in English.

 Basho Reichold Aroun 200 pages, notes start with romaji and Japanese, if you dont want to accidentally read te English translation.

Haiku

 In 11 years

a first song bird on the lamppost

I added the song later, to indicate sound. A bird is already loaded with many things. But as a translator said haiku should have many senses.

Haiga Senryu

 Joshua Gage on horizontal and vertical axis

New to haiku advice for beginners

Mike Rehling on Haiga and Senryu

A friend asked me about my interest in learning Japanese to understand haiku better. I got a sense from the translations that it is better to know them in the original language. She wondered how I knew that it would be a treasure. Then I relaised that I was taken by the haiku translated in English and the Japanese prints attached with them, but I always wondered about the original and how one line of characters held so much meaning in them. 

The Haiku Handbook

Reading the Senryu book, at first I couldnt get myself to move away from the nature writing. Reading that Senryu is about human nature, I realise tat sometimes it is hard to remove our presence or our POV even if it is nature that we are observing.  many Westerners who write haiku are actually writing senryu!

Loved this podcast about pre modern Senryu followed with modern Senryu.

poetry advice from Andrea Hollander

 Men at 40 by Donald Justice. Based on this poem, Hollander wrote a poem called Women at 50 and used a noun in each para from the inspirational poem in a different way.

Maxine Kumin would use traditional structured poem format when she had to write about an emotional subject.

poetry home repair manual by Ted Kooser

Image and text

 So he learned mirror-writing.

"The new technique gave Blake full creative freedom and full control of production. Suddenly, he could combine text and image on a single page, in a single process.."

"since they are both created with the same brush and ink, adding an image to a haiku poem was ... a natural activity." - Stephen Addis 

For some reason, I misunderstood that the image came first and then the haiku.

Interesting that Woodblock printing in Japan was first used for books  and then pictures according to The shortest history of Japan.

script transcends the image and text classification. Calligraphy is the back and forth between them. 

I saw the painsmaking typesetting that needs to be done in a Gutenberg press documentary.

From printed works to architecture

Minna no Nihongo

 Minna no nihongo Translation and Grammatic Notes

Minna no Nihongo Honsatsu II

Japanese to Vietnamese

Japanese Master list

Honsatsu I