Hill (Reisho)
oka, kyū
A lack of consistency in the list of the titles of our blog posts sometimes annoys me, although they are a list of my own decisions. Until last night, I didn’t realize the original title of today’s character, which was “Hills and Heights,” was different from the title of yesterday’s post, “Hill.” I should have checked them twice. I always decide the title of each blog post intuitively when I first receive Nao’s calligraphy. I don’t use the meanings of kanji from dictionaries in the strictest sense of the character. Most characters have a variety of meanings. Having too many options often makes my decision slow down. I like to choose the first word that comes to mind. It often turns out be the simplest one.
My dictionary tells that oka means a hill, a hillock, a height, or a rise. The character depicts them, doesn’t it?
Today’s character is written in a reisho style. Compare it with the one in a kaisho style >>>
Hills or Heights
and the one in a sōshostyle. >>>
Hill (Sosho)
Thanks for the nice daily calligraphy lesson. I’m using it as a kanji resource, so it’s terrific that you show several styles of writing. The first time I saw a Sosho style in a handwritten letter I was shocked how different it was!
For those of us who want to continue to explore the kanji, can you include the kanji character in the text? I appreciate the readings, but it’s also helpful to have the text character like 丘 so we can also find it on kanji websites.
Thanks for a great website!
Dear Darryl,
Thank you for using this blog and giving us a nice comment again.
I have thought about including kanji in blog contents but I learned about search engine optimization and found it is not a good idea to mix English and Japanese. That’s why I have avoided using kanji. However, I haven’t experimented how bad the influence is. Maybe one character in each blog entry doesn’t make any significant difference. I’m still not sure. Do you know anything about this?
Although this may be a temporary change, I will add a corresponding kanji to each blog entry from tomorrow for you and those who want to do the same thing as you do and will see what will happen. If it doesn’t work well, I’ll think about alternative ways.
Thank you for your suggestion.