Show Off Your Kanji Ability The Rock Star Way
Foreigners are proud of their kanji ability. As they should be. You worked your ass off to learn the thousands of characters and made them your own. So sometimes when you are with Japanese people, you can’t help but want to show off just a tiny bit. Especially when you get complimented on merely saying こんにちは.
Now some people think the trick is to be able to write out difficult kanji that a typical Japanese person can’t. I’m not sure why, but the top contenders for this are usually 薔薇(ばら), 醤油(しょうゆ) or 鬱(うつ). Because many foreigners often try to show off kanji writing that Japanese themselves don’t bother memorizing, it falls flat, and is usually unimpressive. It may even show that your Japanese actually isn’t that good. I’ve said before that real masters don’t show off abilities.
So if you are going to do something with kanji, it better be a real show (not showing off), and not just you bragging.
The solution is: One-cut Origami Kanji
This is the method of doing origami, and making only one scissor cut in the paper, yet being able to create highly complex kanji.
You do this, and you own. Simple.
Not only are you doing something that is impressive even if a Japanese person did it, but you are doing it as a foreigner. And it will knock over a Japanese person in that silly Japanese anime fashion where they fall upside down.
Ito Shintaro (伊藤信太郎), master origami guru, released an interesting user-friendly book, which teaches you how to make all kinds of designs with only one cut.
Get out some paper, a scissor, and these are some of the awesome kanji you will be able to produce.
Want some immediate guidance on how to make the 金 kanji?
Demonstration video?
Yes.
Want to take it even a step further? How about full kanji compound words?
You can thank me if this is how you meet your future wife or husband.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
This is badass! Definitely gonna have to practice before trying it in the wild.
Definitely let us know how it goes!
Did you try that book yourself, Adshap? It doesn’t have a lot of good reviews on Amazon.
I haven’t gotten a chance yet to actually try out the book, so I am just going based on the TV special covering it, which made it out to be pretty good.
Though to be fair to the book, it only has 2 reviews on Amazon (a 4 star, and a 2 star), and on Rakuten (http://books.rakuten.co.jp/rb/12652752/) a 5 star. So it’s not the best sampling of reviews (and Japanese reviews are notoriously more strict than Western counterparts).
But the 金 creation video alone should be enough to show off!
Another way to react to someone telling your Japanese is good… Cut out 本当? and show it to them while wearing a bashful expression!
This is beautiful haha. And if you can pull it off by immediately pulling out paper, and a scissor, and finish within 20 seconds, you have a situation that is a work of art.
It seems effective, but it is kind of hard to follow the stroke order when cutting the paper.
___
View my newborn blog about japanese: http://www.japaneasygakkou.blogspot.com.br
Hahaha, very true. You’ll just have to trace it with your finger.
そんな底数画の漢字なら誰でも出来るよ
「ビィアン」をやってみたいだろう?