You can purchase all of my books now on several sites on the net, including amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. If you click below logos you will be redirected to the store. Each of the book has a preview, so you can look inside and see the contents (preview is limited to a few pages, but long enough to give you a good understanding of the contents of a given book). If you have any questions please let me know.

I would like to thank all of you who purchased my recent publications, "Etymology of Japanese kanji - in-depth analysis of selected characters" in particular. If you enjoyed the read please leave a feedback on amazon or Barnes & noble pages, I really appreciate it.

Officially published as of today! Learn Japanese Hiragana is one of three books on the subject of Japanese language and etymology  that I have been working on for some time now. Although Learn Japanese Hiragana and Learn Japanese Katakana  are separate and stand alone books, so it is possible to buy them as stand alone volumes.

The most significant thing that distinguishes my books from any other hiragana and katakana textbooks out there, is that all and every single syllabary or a character was handwritten the way it should be. There is a huge discrepancy between a handwritten Japanese and computer fonts, and this subject is hugely neglected. When I started to study Japanese language 14 years ago, I always wished I had a book with handwritten examples of kanji, hiragana or katakana.

But there is more. Not only each book has handwritten examples of hiragana and katakana, but also the kanji from which each of kana syllabaries evolved. Further, since hiragana evolved from kanji in cursive-script form, I included three different handwritten calligraphy scripts for each kanji to show a clear evolution from the standard script through semi-cursive to cursive script. In case of katakana I did the same thing with kanji radicals that each katakana evolved from.

I have provided a detailed explanation of the origins of sounds of modern katakana and added a phonetic guidance based on pronunciation found in the online Oxford dictionary of English language. You should be able to replicate the proper sound of each katakana syllabary wit ease.

In addition, I discuss the history of evolution of hiragana and katakana on a background of the history of Japanese calligraphy. I have included hand written stroke order charts of each syllabogram, with arrows pointing towards the correct direction of writing. All handwritten examples are based on traditional or historical Japanese calligraphy.

Last but not least, I have included space for exercises, where you can practice your writing modelling yourself on the examples I have provided.

Learn Japanese Katakana and Learn Japanese Hiragana is now available on my store on lulu.com, but in few weeks it will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. but if I receive enough requests I consider publishing it also in electronic form for Kindle, Nook, iBooks.

Visit my page on Lulu bookstore to see preview of the book. 

I have just published another calendar for the year 2015, which is a year of the goat. This calendar contains 13 original Chinese calligraphy works of mine, all written in ancient seal script, following the original forms of characters found on various seals, monuments, bronze artefacts and other historical items from the times of ancient China. All those calligraphy works will be available from my store with calligraphy prints. So anyone interested in the entire collection can buy all 13 works. They are all in identical sizes. The 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac are: 1-Rat 子 2-The Ox 丑 3-The Tiger 寅 4-The Hare 卯 5-The Dragon 辰 6-The Serpent 巳 7-The Horse 午 8-The Ram 未 9-The Monkey 申 10-The Bird 酉 11-The Dog 戌 12-The Boar 亥. The calendar cover represents character 羊, which is the regular Chinese character for a "goat". The zodiac signs are represented by special characters. Below you can see the previe of all 12 months, and the cover. Calendar size is 13.5" wide x 19" high. Also see my phgotography calendars at my store, here.

Photo editing & Chinese and Japanese calligraphy tutorial videos
Buy fine art calligraphy prints at my store in my store on Fina Art Amercia.

I have finally found the time to re-edit and put together my poetry, and I should be able to release the book this year, and to be more precise - this month. It will be a tome gathering all of my best poems written during the years 2007 - 2013., and it will be published under the Ryuurui's Art Studio banner. The book contains over 110 of my poems (c. 125 - 130 pages in A5 format), which are divided into three chapters: love, passion and frustration. You will also find there three of my new calligraphy works, which I will publish only in this very book. So, you will not find them online. I will make the book available in hard and electronic format, and, in time, it will be purchasable via Amazon and Barnes & Noble online stores. I will also create a book preview so one can have a peek inside before buying. This is the first publication out of four books that I would like to see published this year.

Below is a book cover project. Let me have your thoughts!

Thi is a continuation of my previous articles on my new book series on Japanese hiragana and katakana. To view previous posts, see here about the book concept in general, and here in regards to the book cover project.

Below I am inserting a gallery of 3 images (click any to view). You can see what resources I used for writing the first book on Japanese hiragana. Then there is a sample page, and finally a table of contents page which should shed more light on what can one expect tom find inside.

A few words regarding the sample page. Since I published the first draft I received great feedback from you guys, so thank you very much, and I decided to improve a few things.

                bibliography                                    sample page                                table of contents

I added an intuitive phonetic guide based on Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary's British and American English pronunciations of chosen words. This should clear a lot of confusion whenever a tricky pronunciation comes up (such as ゑ / "we"). I also explain where from each of the hiragana syllabograms take their sounds. For example, the hiragana syllabogram つ evolved from the cursive form of kanji 川, but none of the Japanese readings of this character is つ. The book is addresing address all of those issues.

Each hiragana syllabogram will have explained the stroke order and stroke direction, which is crucial for supporting a natural and comfortable way of writing. The diagrams will be large and clear.

In table of contents you can see that there will be a general introduction, history of hiragana based on the evolution of Japanese calligraphy in Japan, as those are closely related. I am adding a short write up on the characteristics of the Japanese writing systems, and I define it very clearly what are kanji, what are kana's and what is the difference between them.

Today I was designing a cover for one of the books that I will be publishing this year. Yes, it will be quite a year. This is not the final design yet, and it can be changed, so I am posting it here to hear your feedback. Feel free to comment below or drop me a line at ponte@ryuurui.com

To read more about this publication, please see a separate article on the subject.

Some of you probably know that I am working on several book projects. Today I decided to add one more, or actually two more. Last year I created a free tutorial on the origins of hiragana and katakana, but it is split into 96 separate articles, and all of the material is online. So, I decided to put together two small exercise books, one for hiragana and one for katakana.

Books will include additional information, such as the history of both kana syllabaries, and a short dictionary that will explain all the difficult terms, etc. Below is a sample page from the hiragana book. It is still just a draft, but I wanted to hear your opinions. Perhaps I could improve it. Those books are aimed at those who wish to learn how to write Japanese kana's. Every single Chinese character in those books is hand written by me, and each script is based on historical forms of a given kanji. The same goes to the kana syllabograms. Books will be in A4 format, available in hard form and as a pdf download.

Edit: here is an updated version of the same page, which I created after receiving valuable feedback from you guys. I really appreciate it!