Domo Arigato

I am quasi-bilingual. I can understand about 80% of spoken Japanese, read at roughly 4th grade level and write at about kindergarten level. I want to teach Kumi Japanese, but I always forget to use it. I think, dream and basically exist almost entirely in English so it often slips my mind that I actually can speak another language. Thank goodness we Skype with my mom every day and at least this way Kumi gets daily exposure to proper Japanese.

The other day, I remembered that I'd gotten some stencils from Daiso (so cheap!) and thought it might be fun to make Japanese flashcards for the basic phonetic alphabet. I added the illustration using watercolor and the paper is from a lovely watercolor notebook by Moleskin. Above are the first three I worked on tonight. Only 45 more to go!! Wow, that sounds like a lot. Maybe I should switch gears and do the English alphabet instead...

**My mother (hi mom!) just informed me that the first letter on the left is incorrect. Darn those $1.50 stencils (for all 48 letters)...back to the drawing board.