Usagi Yojimbo DojoBoard

Well, a relative of mine likes to paint, and told me that she'd like to make me one of those scrolls with kanji written on it that you can see hanging on typical Japanese homes, dojos, etc... I thought that I'd be a pretty cool thing to have, and she told me if I could look for something that I'd like to have written on the scroll. I've been looking for some poems/haiku/pearls of wisdom/anything that would look nice and have some meaning, but my sources are very limited and I don't know where to look. Does anyone know any source (websites, books, magazines, anything!) with these kind of phrases written in Japanese, as well as its reading in romaji and its translation?

So far I've seen those old Chinese sayings made of 4 kanji each, but I've seen only a few and I didn't like them much (if I could take a look at a few more, perhaps I could find a better one.) I've also seen the backcovers of the Spanish edition of Blade Of The Inmortal, which has small poems written on, but I found them too depressing for something to have hanging on your wall. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Another choice would be finding a few words I like and having them written in kanji, but I'd like something like a poem .

I'm not sure about the Kanji, but my favorite book of Haiku is BASHO'S HAIKU - Selected Poems of Matsuo Basho by David Barnhill. You can get it on Amazon in softcover.

That's one of Basho's haiku in my signature below.

~N

Kusa mura ya:
Na mo shiranu,
Shiroku saku.

Entre las hierbas,
una flor
desconocida blanca.

A friend sent me this haiku, she found it in a book on Zen and Japanese culture.
Haiku is my favorite type of poetry.
I used to always flunk Poetry in high school except when we were studying Haiku.
Hey Ziritrion you lucky guy you. If I want something like that, I have to conform with going to a Oriental shop, buying paper, brushes and inks and making the wall hanging myself! But hey if they come out nice you do get a really big sense of pride in your work.
I really do reccomend it, its really quite fun!!

Thanks a lot, I really like that haiku .

Search around under "tanka" as well-- it's a grown-up haiku (7,5,7,5,5, repeat if needed). As for original sources, though, I'm useless.

You know what I'd like to see are some Haiku based on Usagi Yojimbo. If anyone out there would be willing to sponsor such a project for the UYD, drop me a line and we'll promote you to the Retainer ranks!

Well, I couldn't find much on the Internet, but a pretty good discovery was the Eri Takase Studios, which has a pretty good amount of haiku, along with its translations and a picture of the calligraphy version. They also sell custom artwork, so if anyone's interested and doesn't know where to look, this may be a good place to start .

>ziritrion wrote:
>I've been looking for some poems/haiku/pearls of wisdom/anything that >would look nice and have some meaning, but my sources are very >limited and I don't know where to look. Does anyone know any source
>(websites, books, magazines, anything!)

Hi!
Sure! I know some sources, and here You are:

1. Site for learning japanese language:
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/
(autor show how You can draw kanji)

2. Site about japanese swords:
http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/nihonto.htm

3. Site about Aikido - National Martial Art of Japan
http://aikidofaq.com/

4. Site about Daito-Ryu-Aiki-Ju-Jitsu
(the most succesfull, but a little brutal Martial Art - i thing)

Have a nice surf!

Abayo!

ah!

i forgot put link to site about Daito-Ryu-Aiki-Ju-Jitsu:
http://www.daito-ryu.com/

Bye!