September 21, 2005

This morning I went to a "Mothers' Group". One of a fellow teacher's students, Kiyoko, on Saturday invited me to her house as her guest to her Mothers' Group. I was a little apprehensive at first, but she was really nice and it seemed like the nice thing to do so I agreed to go. There were two other women who joined us for the morning. We did painting with Indian ink and some water colours. They paint still life, like flowers or fruit or whatever is sitting about the house, and then write little notes beside. Like one of the ladies did some grapes and then wrote "Fresh from the garden" beside it. It's quite simple and very elegant. Mine kinda suck as it's hard to do. You have to hold the paint brush from the very end of it with just your index and thumb and then move your whole hand. Not much room for control. It's doubly difficult for me to write anything as it's hard enough with a pen to write Japanese, let alone with a paint brush that your aren't allowed to really hold on to. They were really sweet and assured me that my cards looked "very Japanese style". We then had tea with all sorts of yummy wheat products that I couldn't resist. It was a really enjoyable morning and they would like me to join them again in the future. I will look forward to it.