It is a great pleasure for me to announce that I was allowed to participate in this exciting event.

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This is a suncatcher at my window this morning reflecting the sunshine.

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“To delight your mind and please your eyes.”

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I wish lots of pleasures return to our lives.

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This is the seasonal term for around the last week of May and is my favorite.

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For, safflower is written in Chinese characters as 紅花, which happens to be the name of one of my best friends.

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The temperature is steadily going up and it is almost summer.

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So, these are paper fans with children’s songs of the summer season on them.

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The songs are about firework displays, fireflies and sudden showers, all of which are features of summer in Japan.

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The photo shows my work from a long time ago that was exhibited in my first solo exhibition in early 2009.

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I have completely forgotten about this one, which makes me feel very old now.

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Its motif is Zen idea of steps toward enlightenment.  It is only the second step out of ten.

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Just as shown in my last entry, “calligraphy on postcards” is one of my main line of works.

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This time, I thought I would make a change in my idea on this “calligraphy on postcards”.

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So far, I have always tried hard to turn just an ordinary postcard into a work of art.  However, this time, I thought if they carried a small amount of characters or words, it would be something new and interesting, and hopefully, attractive.

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These postcards have “for flower-like you”, “I want to see you” and “Take care”.

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I very much wish people use them just like they use normal type of “picture postcards”, with pictures, photos or illustrations, that is.

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And I hope this idea would give more comforts to people’s “stay home lives”.

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The photo shows my work of about ten years ago.  Its motif is a poem of ancient China describing growing greenery and longer summer days.

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One of my important friends sent me an email message containing a very impressive expression, “juicy greenery”.  She wrote this phrase to describe the dewy leaves of the forest near my house as she saw a picture I sent out to her.

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Then, I remembered this old work of mine.  I just hope it is as impressive as her creative, brilliant usage of words.

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The most famous, popular and important festival in Kyoto, Aoi Matsuri Festival has been held on May 15^th for a very long time, hundreds of years.

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However, regrettably, the main feature of the festival, that is, the parade has been canceled this year.

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The “college” in this haiku is thought to be Kyoto University, the poet’s alma mater.

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I remember when I was working part-time at that university, I noticed surprisingly many students from various parts of Japan showed great interests in cultural and historical events of the city, which made me even more proud of my hometown Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan.

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The plant, one sort of “mallow” with kind of heart-shaped leaves at the bottom of the photo of the small garden at the back of my house is the important symbol of this festival.

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In the college too/

People talk about/

THE festival these days/

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Translation and calligraphy by Chio