5 Japanese students who had been awarded “Good Work” in a calligraphy competition held by two Japanese prestigious newspapers, the Sankei Shimbun and Fujisankei Business I arrived TKU last Tuesday (March 27) for a friendly visit.

They were shown TKU’s “e-Pen” calligraphy software at the Carrie Chang Fine Arts Center by its Associate Director, Chang Ben-hang. All of them were totally enthralled seeing how brush strokes could be produced simply by clicks of the mouse. One student, Nakayoku Satoshi of the University of Tokyo, was amazed at himself how quickly he could learn operating the software. He believed that after some more practice, he would be able to master it as well as real brushes. The other student, Kawada Shirami from Meisei Gakuin prefers using real brushes, but could see the merit of a computerized software training people in basic calligraphy. However, his schoolmate Katsura Seishirou, was totally impressed by how much this software could do apart from calligraphy. He was beside himself when he realized that he could even learn chop (a stamp on which Chinese characters are engraved) carving on the computer! As he’s currently learning chop engraving in Japan, he was delighted that his skill could be improved by such an e-tool. ( ~Ying-hsueh Hu )