Good morning everyone. How are you?

Last night we had a secret party for Rev. Bob and Patti okusama… no … not secret party… Anyway if you went, you will have seen me in a video. I was a funny actor. If you saw it, please NOW forget it. FORGET! OK.You forgot.

 

Every special service, we usually only have our guest speaker give a Dharma message. But today, Yukawa-sensei wanted to hear me. So, here I am.

Let’s see… last week we had the Northern California Buddhist women conference at the Florin Buddhist church. And I gave a workshop on calligraphy. Rev. Torimi was supposed to do this workshop. But he moved to Los Angeles, so I had to do it.

 

When I was in Japan, I studied calligraphy but I should have studied more. I really started to practice only after coming to the United States.

When I first came here, my calligraphy was like this…

Rev. Bob said “it was dancing calligraphy.”

In other words, my Japanese characters looked like they were dancing.

Now, 14 month later, it’s a little better. Here it is.

This looks better, doesn’t it? I have practiced for 14 months to improve my calligraphy skill.

 

At the conference at Florin, some people wanted to know how to write “Sacramento KINGS” in Japanese character.

If you belong to our Sakura gakuen Japanese language school, you might know this.

 

But, maybe most of you don’t know it. So, now I will try to write Sacramento Kings in Japanese…

First I will write Sacramento there are 3 characters in Japanese.

Some of you may know the word for “KINGS” in Japanese. Do any of you know? Japanese say “O-Sama”.

 

This is how we write KINGS in Japanese. Do you want to have this?

At Florin, some people wanted to have this.

I thought some people might want this calligraphy. So, I made 50 copies last night. If someone would like a copy, I will give you one after the service.

But please don’t sell them on Auction …like e-bay.

Because it is of no value.

Although I have worked to improve my Calligraphy since coming here, as I mentioned, I did not study Calligraphy as much as I should have.

At Florin Conference, in my Calligraphy workshop, I found out there were some Calligraphy Teachers! Oh my!

When I was showing people how to write No Mo A Mi Da Butsu, I decided to show them how to write the order, very complicated Kanji-Japanese Characters.

When I did this, one Calligraphy teacher said, “Oh Sensei, that is wrong stroke.” I said “Sorry…how do you write this?”

The teacher showed the correct way. I said “Oh, thank you…”

Our new Bishop Ogui has said many times “It’s okay to make mistakes. What is important is that we must always try our best.” I think Buddha and Shinran-shonin might say the same thing.

“It’s okay to make mistake. What is most important is to always try our best.”

When I came here last year August, I knew only a few English words.

“Good morning, How are you, thank you, I’m sorry, I’m hungry and maybe a few other words”

Still when I speak I use easy words. I make many mistakes, but I try my best to practice speaking English. My current English skill is much better than last year. Don’t you think so? Oh, you think so?  THANK YOU.

I don’t want to force you to say “Oh, sensei’s English is good”

But it’s okay if you do.

 

Gassho

 

We always think it is hard to practice something new or different.

Remember when I got my driver’s license or when you first started to learn to swim or ride a bicycle…

 

In the beginning it is always difficult. But as Bishop Ogui said “it’s okay to make mistakes, what is important is to always try our best”