Started december adventure 2025

Author: nilaykumar

content-org/garden/december-adventure.org

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+#+title: december adventure 2025
+#+date: <2025-12-08 Mon>
+#+hugo_base_dir: ../..
+#+hugo_section: garden
+#+hugo_tags: december-adventure code japanese chinese calligraphy photography
+#+hugo_custom_front_matter: :progress in-progress
+
+Found out about the December adventure on Mastodon (likely from folks over at
+[[https://merveilles.town/][merveilles.town]]). It's already almost a good third of the way into December, but
+better late than never. Here's a bit [[https://eli.li/december-adventure][about it]], but the idea is just to pick a
+project or a few, work on them, and log your progress.
+
+I've taken the liberty of retroactively logging the days I missed.
+
+#+toc: headlines 1
+
+* december 1
+Traveling back from Tokyo. I'm not very good at getting things done on the
+plane.
+
+* december 2 - 3
+Slightly jet-lagged, had to work late, disliking how much colder it is in New
+York -- it was 70F my last day in Tokyo.
+
+* december 4
+Took about 1500 photos with the Fujifilm X-S10 over the two and a half week trip
+to Japan (fewer than I had expected actually, but that's probably because I
+didn't take many photos in Tokyo). As a complete newbie, I've been trying to
+learn a bit about photography and editing. I watched a nice introduction to the
+FOSS workflow+raw developer software [[https://www.darktable.org/][darktable]] by [[https://youtu.be/ZUc6LOzg_Nk][Kevin Ajili]], and processed my
+first photo.
+
+I haven't quite straightened out how to post images on my website, but once I
+do, maybe I'll show it here. In the interest of keeping page size/load times
+down (inspired, as usual, by [[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/][low-tech design]]), it might make sense to default
+images to low-detail thumbnails (dithered?), with the full image available via
+on hyperlink.
+
+* december 5
+Did a practice JLPT N3 test, what with the exam looming on the 7th. I had been
+low-key pretty stressed about the exam, given that I hadn't really studied the
+language seriously in a few months and had never actually taken any practice
+tests. Surprisingly, the practice test went well. I'm definitely still lacking
+on the grammar front, but I now suspect I'll be able to pass.
+
+With that stress slightly relieved, I ended up editing another 34 photos from
+the trip. Since I still know next to nothing about editing, I mostly just
+applied some standard edits (adjusted exposure, tweaked the sigmoid module's
+contrast, denoised, dehazed, sharpened) for every image. For a few of them I
+used the tone equalizer module to bring out some of the shadows or tone
+down/establish contrast in the highlights. I also played with the colors a bit
+-- I found myself gravitating towards the Kodak Portra 400 like preset on the
+color equalizer module. I know it's lazy to use a preset, but the cool-toned
+greens felt like they captured the mood in some of the small temples. Maybe
+after doing a bit more photography and editing, I'll get a better sense of my
+own creative direction for color.
+
+I hope to post these pictures somewhere. Maybe on my blog or in this digital
+garden. I'm also considering set up a PixelFed account. It might help me get
+more serious about learning photography.
+
+* december 6
+Did another two JLPT practice tests. Feeling pretty hopeful about passing,
+but not looking forward to the actual experience of taking a
+filling-in-the-bubbles exam. I don't thing I've taken a written exam in almost
+10 years... definitely more used to administering exams at this point.
+
+* december 7
+Exam went OK. Not super happy with it, but I'd be a bit surprised if I didn't
+pass. The passing criteria are not particularly high. I hate the feeling of
+being totally clueless on an exam question, but I think one has to approach
+language learning differently than math. Or maybe it's that language exams tend
+to have a broader scope (in the sense of the ideas and details that might
+appear) than math exams tend to. Then again, it feels silly to say that language
+learning is more of a lifelong process than learning, say, algebraic topology
+is. So maybe I've just got a rosy picture in hindsight of the exams I took in
+grad school, what with grade performance being largely irrelevant at that point.
+
+** kakuji(角字)
+I've always been really interested in Chinese characters, but this trip I got a
+[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seals_in_the_Sinosphere][hanko]] made by the very kind Arami-san(荒見さん) at [[https://www.hanko-shibuya.com/en-us/][Todo Insho]] while I was in
+Tokyo. When sketching out a prototype on paper, he consulted with a little
+handbook listing out kanji in various scripts. This piqued my interest, and I
+ended up buying a [[https://www.graphicsha.co.jp/detail.html?p=54933][book]] on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_script][seal script]] in the design section of a bookstore in
+Shibuya.
+
+One part of the book that caught my eye was a page-and-a-half section on kakuji
+(角字, literally: square/angled-letters). There's something [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edomoji#/media/File:Kakuji_sample.png][visually striking]]
+about their extreme space-filling blockiness when compared to the gentle
+hieroglyphic curves of seal script or the varied visual rhythm of contemporary
+regular script.
+
+It seems that there aren't too many examples of kakuji readily available on the
+web. In particular, there's no complete font (say, for the jōyō kanji) that I
+know of. There are about 200 or so examples that I've found images of. I'm
+wondering it would be possible to extend -- semi-programmatically, perhaps --
+the kakuji designs from these examples to all of the jōyō kanji. The basic idea
+is that Chinese characters can be decomposed into building blocks called
+radicals, so it may be possible to take the glyphs used for radicals in those
+examples and extend them. Two immediate caveats: (1) we may not find all the
+radicals we need in the examples so we may need to make our own designs, and (2)
+scripts do not generally have unique per-character glyphs, and kakuji are no
+different.
+
+I'll get back to thinking about this tomorrow, but for now I'll link some
+resources that I've found.
+On kakuji:
+- Black Silk, who seem to specialize in family crests/seals and related
+  craftsmanship, have a [[https://www.black-silk.com/crest-list/crest-kakuji/][catalog of 角字]]
+- There's the Edomoji dictionary (江戸文字大字典) written by 日向数夫, which I
+  can't figure out how to get a copy of. I learned of this from [[https://youtu.be/welpJZSPtME][two]] [[https://youtu.be/esBk7o3DcYs][videos]] on
+  YouTube by Inkbox, which are related to what I'm thinking about here.
+  Incidentally, there's a comment on the first video asking the same question
+  I'm asking here
+- An artist [[https://www.zenzo.org/][Zenzo]] who designs a few new kakuji every week
+  
+On radical-based decomposition of Chinese characters:
+- [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Chinese_characters_decomposition][Here]] is a graphical decomposition of characters that I learned of from the
+  website [[https://kanji.club/][kanji.club]], which may be of use here
+- A slightly tangential, but still interesting project called the [[https://github.com/LingDong-/rrpl][Recursive
+  Radical Packing Language]]
+
+* december 8
+** more on kakuji and seal scripts
+Continuing the thread from yesterday, I thought it might be a good exercise to
+start by translating the book's description of kakuji. It's definitely above my
+pay grade, but I'll do my best to translate it in-line (I tend to use the
+Jitindex Japanese-to-English dictionary).
+#+begin_quote
+江戸中期の太平爛熟期になると，寺小屋の普及により, いわゆる「読み，書き, そろばん」
+は市民の常識となってきましたし，看板などの文字の書体もいろいろ人目につくように工
+夫されてきました。
+
+As the Edo period matured into its peaceful middle years and the terakoya (private
+elementary schools) spread throughout the shogunate, "yomi, kaki, soroban"
+(reading, writing, and the abacus) came to be general knowledge among commoners.
+Accordingly, various calligraphic styles were developed for use on signboards
+designed to catch the attention of those passing by.
+
+相撲文字や芝居の勘亭流など特殊な書体が創案され, それが今日まで受け継がれてきてい
+るのは周知の通りです。
+
+Sumomoji (used in advertising sumo) and kanteiryū (used in
+advertising plays) are two examples of styles conceived during this period that
+have since then seen continuous use and are still today well-known (to a
+Japanese audience).
+
+しかし，これらはみな筆文字の変り種ですが，屋号や商標，ことに印半纏の裾によく使わ
+れた文字は，定規を用いて生み出された当時唯一のレタリングで, しかも楷書からでなく，
+篆書を基調としてデザインされていることが特徴といえましょう。
+
+Kakuji is a style of lettering unique to this period of time that --
+unlike the varieties mentioned above, which used a brush -- used rulers to
+write store names, trademarks, and most of all, to decorate the hems of
+shirushibanten (livery coats). This style, moreover, did not follow the
+standard kaisho style of writing used for Chinese characters, but instead was
+designed off of seal script (the style used to engrave seals).
+
+これはすでに来朝の元・明の禅僧たちによってもたらされた篆刻が, 文人墨客の間に普及
+を見て，篆書そのものが一般市民の眼にも親しい存在となってきたからでしょうが, すべ
+て直線で処理された篆書デザインとして, なかなか優秀なものということができるでしょ
+う。
+
+Seal engraving, previously brought to Japan by Zen priests, had spread among
+writers and artists and thus seal script was a familiar sight to the general
+population, but kakuji would likely have stood out with it purely straight
+lines.
+
+この直線による筆画の処理は, おそらく中国の九畳篆あたりにヒントを得たのではないか
+と思われます。
+
+The method of drawing strokes as straight horizontal or vertical lines is
+thought to have been influenced by the Chinese [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-fold_seal_script][nine-fold seal script]] (九叠篆
+simplified, 九疊篆 traditional, jiǔdiézhuàn pinyin).
+
+この文字をあしらった印半纏は, 以後明治・大正からつい戦前まで, 大工・左官等の職人
+に愛用されてきましたが, 最近はあまり見かけなくなりました。
+
+Shirushibanten adorned with kakuji would remain a favorite of carpenters and
+plasterers during the Meiji and Taisho eras until the days leading up to the
+war, but are now rarely seen.
+
+#+ATTR_HTML: :class attribution
+小田切草雲，篆書デザイン，p.38
+#+end_quote
+
+This passage (which unfortunately seems to be all the book has on kakuji)
+suggests looking also at the nine-fold seal script. Here are some resources I
+have found:
+- a collection of [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Calligraphy_manuals_including_nine-fold_seal_script][images]] of calligraphy manuals including nine-fold seal script
+- a [[https://babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2012/10/khitan-seals.html][site]] with some images of the Khitan seals and a table of potential correspondences with
+  standard character forms 
+- some helpful [[https://digitalorientalist.com/2025/02/25/digital-resources-for-reading-japanese-seals/][notes]] on resources for reading Japanese seals
+- slightly off-topic, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kufic#Square_Kufic][square Kufic script]] is an Arabic doppelganger!
+I'm sure there's a lot more resources in Chinese, but unfortunately my Mandarin
+is still super basic.
+
+I was hoping to start looking at some of the available kakuji, breaking down
+radical shapes, and writing some code, but I got a little too interested in seal
+scripts and the translation was tough, so I'll leave that for tomorrow.

content-org/garden/yojijukugo.org

@@ -15,3 +15,7 @@ found interesting.
 - 善因善果（ぜんいんぜんか）: good actions lead to good rewards; one good turn
   deserves another
 - 一石二鳥（いっせきにちょう）: killing two birds with one stone
+- 問答無用（もんどうむよう）：there being no use arguing about it
+- 単刀直入（たんとうちょくにゅう）：straight to the point; frank; direct
+- 文人墨客 （ぶんじんぼっかく）：writers and artists, those delighting in
+  poetry, literature, painting, calligraphy, etc.