Post and share Japanese cultural articles. Kimono, hair arrangement, tea ceremony, ikebana, Japanese traditional dancing, Japanese cooking, etc.

About a month ago, on the beautiful day of March, UTJA hosted the annual Winter
Festival, which is 冬祭り (Fuyumatsuri) in Japanese. Why is it FUYU (winter) though March
is almost HARU (spring)? The reason is that Toronto, where our university is located, is
still in the winter weather!!

There are many booths that provide visitors opportunities to experience Japanese culture.
In this post, I would like to introduce two of them to the event!

This booth is a calligraphy/Shodo booth. Shodo is one of the oldest authentic Japanese Art form that has been practiced by people in Japan. When I was in Japanese elementary school, I also have learned this art form to acquire culture.
In this booth, visitors can write Japanese characters by using special Sumi(墨) ink and brushes.
UTJA offers a service for visitors to choose words that they come up with. For example, the person in front seems that she is trying to write a letter 愛 (love) underneath the letter, 猫 (cat). There is no such a word 猫愛 in Japanese word, but the combination of these kanji characters express her love toward cats.

This below is a photo of myself teaching origami to a visitor! Other UTJA executive member and I taught visitors instructions of the ways to create objects such as cranes, yukata, flowers, ninja stars (shuriken) and so on. People seemed enjoyed learning. I also had fun teaching!

Thank you for reading.
I distributed the highlight of the event over two posts since there is a lot to post in one. I hope everyone obtains positive feelings by seeing these posts!! In addition, I wish everyone's well-being and health under this severe COVID-19 situation. Stay safe and take care, and see you soon in the next post!