m36_i_a_2b_i_94_08_02

2
figures instead. He is an expert doing bamboo, and when
friends of Mr. Hotlas came in, Mr. Hotla would ask Pete to
paint bamboo, which they would admire very much and
I would do orchids. The Kyoto boy had to return home so
the Student helped tell us things by looking up words in
a Japanese-English dictionary. He found "admire" and
"gratitude" which were used to express the friends feelings.
One day he said "customer" which was supposed to
indicate what the friend wanted Pete to draw but we looked
rather blank so he found the word "liberty" which we decided
meant a free hand drawing. It really was funny at times.
The last day we were there, Saturday, several friends came in,
two men in the morning who stayed for lunch. One was
"Melody" and played on the Samisen for after lunch, Mr
Hotla singing with him. They looked very serious when
they sang and then suddenly would break off laughing. I
never could quite make out whether it was the real end of
the song or not. Mr Hotla even danced for us which was
great fun. Several more friends arrived later on, and there
were eight or ten sitting around. X We didn't paint much
then but Mr Hotla spent the rest of the afternoon finishing
ptting pictures in our books. He made the most beautiful
cranes, pheasant, owl, tiger and Mt. Fuji, while we
admired, drank tea and let our legs sleep. The lessons were
most interesting though really five would have been almost
enough. However Mrs Miyaoka had engaged him for the
ten days and we felt we should study that long. We were
glad we did in the end, for it was really a wonderful
method of painting that we studied. Also the weather was
pretty cold and rainy to do much else, and the Cherry Trees
are only just coming out now. It has been a very late
spring.