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Word of the Day: Lost art
If you live in Japan for any length of time, you will need the soon-to-be lost art of hanko carving.
This is because everyone in Japan needs a hanko – a personal stamp or seal.
Other countries such as China, Korea and Taiwan also use personal seals.
The thing is that these seals used to be hand-carved, but now, in Japan, at least, a computer-controlled machine can make these seals.
Hand-carving personal seals is becoming a lost art.
A lost art is something that requires skill and that not many people have anymore.
I remember when I got my first personal seal about 18 years ago.
My wife took me to a local hanko shop, and the gentleman hand-carved a seal for me.
Even though he was somewhere just south of 90, he said it was the first time he had carved a hanko for a foreigner.
About five years ago, I needed another one.
I went back to the same shop, but the gentleman had passed away, and the store had closed.
I ended up buying one online that was machine-carved.
It seems a little sad that hand-carving personal seals is now somewhat of a lost art.
The saddest part is it’s becoming a little more lost every day.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 74.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.