Kawaii is the word for the Japanese culture of cute, adorable and childlike. When you see a sushi roll with a cute smiley face, that's Kawaii at work. You might also find it in an innocent, high voice like a child's.

I love how, by adding a couple of big eyes, maybe with a couple of little highlights, a smiley mouth and perhaps a little shy blushing on the cheek, it's possible to transform a cactus or a pencil case into something adorable. As a family, we've enjoyed the card game Sushi Go, which includes cute wasabi, fried shrimp, and even a chopstick holder. It's a bit like the magic of adding googly eyes to anything to make it fun.

The childlike simplicity, sweetness and cute artwork of Kawaii is also in Sanrio's Hello Kitty.

I liked chindogu, the art of unuseless inventions, so much I accidentally sketched it twice: chindōgu back-scratching t-shirt, the 3 tenets of chindōgu

Kawaii

Hara Hachi Bu is a saying from Okinawa in Southern Japan that advises people to stop eating when they're 80% full. Okinawa is famous for the longevity of the people who live there.

I learned it from Michael Pollan's excellent book Food Rules many years ago. He shares traditions, including the Ayurvedic in India, the Chinese, and the prophet Muhammad, that all counsel stopping eating earlier than your stomach might be telling you. That, and the German expression, "You need to tie off the sack before it gets completely full."

Hara hachi bu also appears in Dan Buettner's Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. Blue Zones are areas in the world with the longest lifespans. Dan Buettner identifies eating to no more than 80% full as one potential factor in Okinawans' long lives.

The more literal translation of hara hachi bu is stomach eight parts (out of ten).

Some other methods to eat less without sacrificing enjoyment include:

Eat slowly so that changes in hunger signals from your stomach have a chance to reach your brain

Avoid distractions such as the TV while eating (when eating dinner, just eat dinner?)

Have a good selection of convenient (stacking) Tupperware for storing leftovers

When drinking tea, just drink tea (I like this sketch—I have it on my wall—so I drew hara hachi bu in the same Ligne Claire style)

Non-stacking Tupperware should be destroyed

It's sometimes misspelled hari hachi bu or said as hara hachi bun me.

Hara Hachi Bu

Ma is the negative space — the space that makes the whole. Formed by the rather beautiful Chinese characters of 'Door' and 'Sun', like the sun gleaming through a doorway, it represents what isn't there and how that helps form what is.

Ma is present in art, including beautiful minimalistic ink brush drawings and music where the silence and quiet that surround the notes help make a piece what it is.

Some vintage-related sketches: figure and ground, use white space with care, John Cage

SP 795 - Ma - smaller.png

With well-insulated houses and central heating as standard, I always grew up with heating the space as how you stay warm in the winter. A colleague once shared with me that where he'd lived, they thought of it as heating people, not spaces when looking to stay warm.

The heating people approach means rather than heating the air in the room, you focus on heating the person: warm clothes, hot drinks, baths, cosy furniture with high backs and sides that traps heat in, or furniture that is itself heated like the kotatsu or aga, and generally local heating where a small room or even part of a room may be warm while the rest may be cool — dividing screens are sometimes used.

This approach was common until relatively recently and also still is in countries where it was difficult to stay cool in the summer and houses weren't typically built to keep heat in.

Thanks to Peter Wyatt-Brandenburg for sharing with me many years ago.

Heating people, heating spaces

Kintsugi is the repair of a ceramic item, perhaps a bowl or vase, with a bright gold seam. Like wabi sabi, kintsugi reflects a view that wear and use of an object adds value rather than detracts. Rather than try to hide the past damage and the repair instead it is celebrated and enhanced. A bowl repaired with kintsugi might be seen as more valuable than one that had never been broken.

An ebook might reload the same every time. A book, instead, accumulates its previous use in its pages and appearance — the slight bend in the pages, discoloration from fingerprints or sunlight, creases in the spine at frequently visited pages, a pencil mark here and there. The book itself hints at the story of its own life. A well-thumbed secondhand book can be a beautiful thing.

You may have noticed some modern kintsugi in Kylo Ren's helmet.

Kintsugi

Wabi sabi is a beautiful Japanese idea and worldview of appreciating the small traits of imperfection, the changes in things as they age, and that nothing is wholly complete. It might be appreciating the unique unevenness in a handmade bowl, the cracks and weathering of wood as it is grows old, or the softened and coloured pages of an old book.

It's a lovely frame of mind that helps us see the beauty in things that aren't perfect and brand new. As a society, it's probably something we could do with more of.

The simple phrasing of nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect is from Wabi Sabi Simple by Richard Powell.

Wabi sabi

Chindogu are inventions that are not really useful yet are not completely without use. They make sense, but you’d never use them. They are also, as a result, often really funny.

This chindogu article gives some great examples while also sharing the 10 tenets of what makes chindogu, chindogu. Things like: there must be the spirit of anarchy —  they represent freedom of thought and action. And they must exist — just the idea isn’t enough; they must be made.

Apparently, the selfie stick was invented as chindogu but failed as people evidently actually found it useful — though you can still see why it might have started as chindogu.

Also see: affordance, forcing function, and more genius from the Japanese: Tsundoku

Chindogu

Tsundoku is a beautiful Japanese word for acquiring and piling up books without reading them.

It is constructed from two words that loosely mean "piling up" and "reading."

It's easy to fall prey to tsundoku. Immediately upon entering a bookstore, I'm filled with the promise of knowledge and entertainment that exudes from the books. Each book calls out to share its wisdom and the draw of quiet hours spent reading it.

Given that it takes hours to read most books and only moments to buy them, practising tsundoku is a common pastime.

The sketch is loosely based on my parents’ bedroom while I grew up, both of whom are experienced and talented tsundoku-ers/tsundokists.

This sketch and many other word-related sketches appear in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures. I won't be offended if the book makes it into a beautiful pile—just please pop it at the top.

3,500 Lifetime Reads—the number of books you might read in a lifetime

Tsundoku

From various sources I have learned that mandarins are the original, from China, and were rather fancy and therefore only suitable for high society, which included mandarins (bureaucrats).

Satsumas are a type of mandarin cultivated in the Japanese district of Satsuma.

Clementines are named after Father Clément Rodier who may have cultivated the variety himself.

And tangerines are so named as being from Tangiers in Morocco, one of the places where mandarins were first imported into Europe.

Origins of mandarins

Unuseless inventions. Invented by the Japanese. Worth a quick chindogu search.

Japan sketches