Origami A Day 4: Running Baby Squirrel

Today's model comes from the pages of Origami Zenshuu, a collection of easier origami diagrams for kids in Japan. It was folded from yet another 15x15 cm square of Suisai origami paper. I may redo this one later at a smaller size due to its ease and the fact that my squirrel is huge compared to my other models.

The diagram was pretty detailed and included notes for every step (in Japanese), so there were no problems with folding. It's clear this book was meant for beginners and it's nice that everything is explained so thoroughly. The hardest step was probably when you had to pull up the layers to form the head, but everything squashed easily. It took me about 15 minutes from start to finish.

It's cute, if a little simple. Not sure of someone would look at this and instantly think squirrel. Color probably also plays a part in this, as I hadn't found my solid colored paper and opted for orange, which was the closest I felt would work.

I don't like drawing on my models, but I may make an exception with this one. The face is just too plain.

I like making models that move in some fashion. It's why I still enjoy making hopping frogs and flapping birds. Thanks to the fold in the tail, the running squirrel will fly forward a short distance if you quickly tap it.

Pretty fun overall. Definitely recommended if you can find the diagram.

Double Prizes: Nyanpire

As I've mentioned before, I love Japanese crane games. No visit to Kumamoto was complete without a visit to UFO Catcher, Geo, or the basement of Tsutaya (though that last one rarely produced any results). In fact, on more than one occasion, prizes from these machines would introduce me to some aspect of Japanese pop culture I was not aware of before. One such property was The Gothic World of Nyanpire.

The Gothic World of Nyanpire began as a doujinshi in 2009. Though often associated with adult content, the term doujinshi refers to any self published material, be it book, magazine, or manga. In this case, Nyanpire is nothing more than some short stories about the titular character and his friends. They are relatively short as well, the first two volumes weighing in at 18 and 24 pages respectively. We learn about Nyanpire's origins and watch as he meets new friends and is taken in by a girl named Misaki. The manga is ongoing and was popular enough to get a 12 episode OVA last year.

For me, however, Nyanpire began as an adorable cat plush in a crane machine. I can't remember which one I won first, but I became hooked on collecting them pretty quickly. This one's sash reads "血を下さい" which means "Blood, please". Adorable and perhaps just a little frightening.

Nyanpire goods come in all shapes and sizes. The upper plush is meant to be attached to a bag or phone. The lower one is a coin purse. I remember it being exceptionally hard to win. I probably could have filled it twice over with the change I used to get it.

As I said, the Nyanpire manga largely consists of Nyanpire hanging out with his friends. The first one he runs into is this guy. His name is Masamunya and his look is based on the historical figure Date Masamune. You may have noticed that both Nyanpire and Masamunya both have "nya" in their names. This is because "nya" is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound cats make. Also, how easy was it to get me to try for this twice? All they did was put him in festival wear, opened his mouth, and gave him a little fan.

Another of Nyanpire's friends, Chachamaru is the only cat I know of in the series without "nya" in his name. He is the last cat Nyanpire befriends. I have a larger version of this one somewhere, but I believe it's currently boxed away somewhere.

There's a fourth cat as well, whom Nyanpire meets at the end of the first manga. He is an angel/cat who has been thrown out of heaven named Nyatenshi. I don't have any plushes of him...yet.

Origami A Day 3: Fox

Today's fox diagram can be found here. This site seems like a pretty good place for those wanting to start folding. Though the site lists this model as hard, I'd place it as intermediate if you've got some folding experience. I'm once again using my 15x15 cm Suisai paper.

As I said, folding this model wasn't too difficult, though I think the diagram is vague on some points. It doesn't offer any indication on when folds need to be duplicated, offers no commentary to help explain the folds, and indicates folds that don't exist on at least one occasion. Step 29 shows a layer or fold that vanishes in the next step. A few of my layers also ended up wider than what was illustrated. These issues held me up a little bit, resulting in about an hour folding time. Still...

If you follow the instructions keeping these things in mind, it turns out alright in the end. Much like yesterday's unicorn, I like the simple design. It's not quite as cartoony, but it's still very cute. I think the big head helps.

I don't know if it's instantly recognizable as a fox, as it could easily be confused for a cat or maybe even a dog (if you squint just right). I'm also not sure how I feel about the head being 3D when the rest of the model is relatively flat. On the plus side, it gives the model a bit of character, but it's a bit difficult to keep the head down, in shape, and the colored bits hidden all at once.

And hey, it stands without any problems.

Origami A Day 2: Unicorn

Today's unicorn diagram can be found here. I once again used a piece of 15x15 cm Suisai origami paper, choosing red for this model.

This particular unicorn pattern is one of the simpler ones I've attempted lately, having little success with the more advanced version found in Dragons, Witches, and other Fantasy Creatures Origami. If your familiar with reverse and rabbit ear folds, you should have no problem making this. I personally didn't bother with the rabbit ear folds on step 5, opting instead to just fold the flaps forward. The result was a little less crisp, but fits well with the simplified feel of the overall model. I had to refold the neck a few times due to some balance problems. It took me about 15 minutes to finish. I placed it in a book and set it at the bottom of a stack of other books to help flatten it overnight.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I enjoy the cartoony proportions and feel it's easily recognizable.

As I mentioned, I had to refold the head a few times. This is because there is so much weight in the head. Just looking at the diagram makes that apparent. At first, my model couldn't even stand on its own, toppling forward as soon as I removed my hand.

I fixed the problem by pushing the initial reverse fold of the neck back toward the body and making it a little steeper. This in turn pushed the entire head assembly further back and allowed the model to stand on it's own. Some other potential solutions to this problem include sweeping the front legs out to the sides for more stability or making the back leg shorter.

I really like this model. It's simple and fun. It's something I could see showing my students if I'd run across it sooner.

Kanji In Context: 呪文

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I acquired a great deal of Japanese reading material during my time in Japan. Though I am nowhere near fluent in Japanese (I failed the JLPT level 3 twice) I nevertheless enjoy reading, and occasionally struggling, through a japanese manga or light novel.

There are a couple of lessons I've learned while trying to find books that not only interest me, but also achieve that delicate balance between amusement and challenge. I need something that will push me to learn something new, but not something so hard that reading it becomes a chore. I find the best books for me are those which are set in our reality with maybe a hint of something otherworldly to make it interesting. It's even better if the story is set in a school. The reason being is that I have become quite comfortable with words associated with school life and those were the most useful for me to learn while I was in Japan.

While One Piece may be my favorite manga in English, I found it too time consuming to really appeal to me in Japanese. It taught me a number of interesting words like pirate, captain, and navy. However, it is so seeped in its own world that I found myself having to look up every other word and taking as much as an hour to get through a single chapter. I instead started gravitating to titles such as Super Dog Rilianthal, Kuroko no Baske, Enigma, and Yotsuba&! They were easier to follow and helped reinforce vocabulary I would use on a regular basis while also introducing me to new words. I still read a bit on the slow side, but can get through a volume of one of these titles in a few days if I'm really motivated.

Before I get to the crux of this post, I suppose I should explain briefly what kanji is. Japanese actually consists of three forms of writing: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is closest to the English alphabet, with a symbol to represent one of 46 syllables. For example, to write the syllable "de" you use the symbol "で". Katakana is a second alphabet with letters representing the same 46 syllables as hiragana. The difference between the two is in usage. Katakana is used exclusively for loan words, words taken from other languages. So the "で” from earlier becomes"デ”. Confused yet? Well, it gets worse...

Kanji is the third form of writing in Japan. Unlike hiragana and katakana, kanji consists of pictographs, symbols that represent ideas more than they do sounds. Due to the complicated way in which kanji was brought over from China and adapted for the Japanese language, each kanji can have several pronunciations, though their meanings are fairly consistant. The trouble with kanji, and something I didn't realize until I actually visited Japan, is that without it you are illiterate. While some writing, especially comics or books for kids, will include the hiragana readings for kanji, a practice called furigana, most do not as it is assumed the average citizen knows how to pronounce it.

As yet another avenue to share my growth and experience with the Japanese language, I thought it would be fun to occasionally share what I'm currently reading and explain a word I've recently learned from it.

Today's word comes from a light novel called Kuromajosan ga Toru. It's the story of an elementary witch in training. As such, though today's word will rarely come up in conversation, it's nevertheless a fun one to know. The word is 呪文(じゅもん, jumon) and means spell, charm, incantation, or magic word. The first kanji 呪(のろ, noro) can mean charm or curse. I became familiar with this kanji while reading Enigma, as the character Moto often refers to his power as a curse early on. The second kanji 文(ぶん, bun) has a number of meanings, though I've most often seen it associated either with art in words such as 文化(ぶんか, bunka) which means culture or with literature, figures, and sentences in words like 文書(ぶんしょ, bunsho) which means document or writing. Putting the two together gives you a compound meaning something along the lines of "cursed word" or "charmed sentence" thus explaining how the same term could apply to a single word or an entire incantation.

I'll no doubt run across a few more unfamiliar words as I work my way through this book (I just finished chapter one after all) and when I do, I'll be sure to do my best to explain what I've learned from it. If your interested in attempting reading japanese manga to help your studies, I'd suggest yesasia as a good place to start. I've also found jisho.org to be the best, most comprehensive online Japanese to English dictionary. See you next time.

Origami A Day 1: Triceratops

I've been on a dinosaur kick recently, having just finished the two models I need to recreate one of my favorite scenes from Firefly.

So today, I thought I'd continue with the triceratops pattern I found here. I used a blue sheet of 15x15cm Suisai Origami paper. This triceratops pattern is fairly advanced, but it didn't give me near as much trouble as the t-rex. It is entirely possible to finish as directed at this size.

The diagram instructions were very nicely detailed and well illustrated, making the more difficult folds easy to follow. My only complaint would be the 2/3 fold on step six, as you just have to eyeball it and hope for the best. I was a bit nervous about the thickness of the layers by step 13, but they mostly worked out okay. I also had a bit of trouble when it came to folding the head up in step 50, but this was because of an incorrect fold I made in the step before. All in all, it took me about two hours to fold this model.

I'm pretty happy with the result overall. It certainly looks like a triceratops and I doubt the average person would notice the minor flaws that I am more than willing to expound upon.

I fudged a bit on the horns and I think the frill is a bit larger than it's meant to be. I just could not find a way to make rabbit-ear folds at this size. Still, the face is instantly recognizable, so I'm happy with it.

Look at his awesome feet! If there is one ridiculous thing that gets me easily excited about my models, it's when I can pull off decent looking feet at tiny sizes. I'm quite happy with these. However, due to some imprecise folds early on, one foot did end up a bit...off. I was able to make it work, but it seems like one side of my models always ends up looking better than the other.

Yay! there all one big happy family. Now if only I could get my hands on a copy of Dinosaurios de Papel and make me an ankylosaurus...

Origami A Day: Introduction

I’ve been interested in origami (the Japanese art of paper folding) for a long time. As far back as middle school, I was folding simple patterns like the traditional crane and jumping frog. I briefly joined an origami club during my last year as a college student and had the opportunity to fold a bit during my stay in Japan as well, usually as a way to connect with the students or decorate my English board. Most of the kids were pretty impressed and I even had a few teachers marveling at some of my more complicated models.

One of my school secretaries, in turn, showed me her kirigami, which is the art of paper cutting.

Recently, I’ve been pursuing this hobby a bit more seriously than I have in the past. As a way to share my creations with others, I thought it would be fun to try for one origami pattern a day and see how long I could keep at it.

I would place myself as an intermediate to upper-intermediate folder. I’m familiar with the terms found in a typical origami book and have made several complicated models, with varying degrees of success. I am not acquainted, as some are, with the mathematics behind folding nor am I able to conceptualize my own models. As such, the models I fold will run the gamut of my abilities. It all depends on what I'm in the mood to fold that day.

Each entry in this series will include the following information:

Model Name (probably in the title)

The type of paper I’m using

A link to the diagram or citation of the book I found it in

A difficulty ranking

My thoughts about the folding of the model

Pictures of my completed model

My thoughts about the outcome

Other trivia I find interesting

I look forward to the challenge!