Writing Beautiful Hiragana

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I saw a question on Quora asking how to write beautiful Japanese Hiragana. I posted my answer today. It's my first time using Quora. I got 9 up-votes already. There were 7 answers before. Most of them had no up-votes, or only have one up-vote. Only one of them had 3 up-votes. That means my answer really worked. Ha ha.



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Now, how in the world did I ever link Morse Code rhythm with Hiragana writing? How come I am always the one to come up with the kind of correlations that no one else can find?

I am the kind of person that has linked Autism to Fourier Transforms in calculus, or to renormalization in particle physics, or to CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) and RNN (Recursive Neural Network) in Deep Learning in the field of modern Artificial Intelligence. I am the one that has used Square Root Law in statistics to link autism to anthropology and archaeology, and infer that autism genes entered human race about 10,000 years ago, right after the invention of bow and arrow ... like the case of color blindness. I am the one parent that saw it all clearly when my son was 2.5 years old, on how to raise autistic children. I am the one that has two very happy autistic children, while most other parents suffer big time. I do things that no other parents do. It suffices to look at the animation videos that I have made to raise my children. I mean, who else in the world communicates and raises their children via making animation video clips? So many people laugh at me and make fun of me, but guess what? They are the ones complaining about issues with their children. They are the ones suffering. They are the ones that are not even happy. All those people in this forum that used to laugh at me and making fun of me, guess what? They are all gone. They have all disappeared. Isn't that funny?

I always say: autistic people can see things that no one else can see, and they can solve problems that no one else can solve.

Why are autistic people so good at finding things that no one else can find? Let me tell you how I did it in this case.

A few weeks ago, my children all of a sudden became interested in Morse code. I kind of played with them a bit. Sure, my son did build a buzzer circuit, but the switch there was not very good for the purpose of Morse code. Then, sometime later we visited their grandparents (my parents). Their grandpa liked to sing Japanese Enka karaoke songs. My daughter actually sang alone, even though she didn't understand Japanese. To make it easier for my daughter, I download the lyrics and did some English and Romaji translation, and printed out in a paper sheet, so that my daughter could see the Hiragana/Kanji part, the Romaji transliteration, and the English translation. (I don't speak Japanese, by the way, but with Google translate, and a lot of human effort, I was able to do an OK job.) In the process, I wrote some part of the lyrics on a piece of paper, and also on LCD drawing board / writing tablet. You know, my Hiragana characters always used to look awful. But then, all of a sudden I remembered about my kids' recent interest in Morse code. Voilà. Once I made the connection, I finally understood how to properly write Hiragana. The trick is that there is rhythm to Hiragana writing that you can't possibly see when it is all printed. And that rhythm is pretty much Morse-code like.

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The other day my 10-year-old daughter somehow found some educational video clips made by Brazilian scientists. In one particular video, it talked about the DNA molecular biology of the metabolism related to diabetes.



In the video, there was a turtle-like cartoon animal that represented IRS (Insulin Receptor Substrate). My 8-year-old son watched the video, too. But of course he did not understand the molecular biology part. He did find the video funny, particularly regarding what the IRS turtle did. So, immediately after watching the video with his sister, he made a "mechanical turtle" out of Mega Bloks:



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The way I linked Hiragana writing to Morse code, and the way my son linked the IRS cartoon icon to Mega Bloks, are actually not that different. Basically, in the brain of autistic people, once they become passionate about something, they don't stop thinking about it. There is a subconscious thinking-loop running in the background. So, when I was writing Hiragana, in the back of my mind I was still thinking about Morse code, even though it happened many days earlier. Similarly, my son had a huge passion for building things with Mega Bloks or Lego. So, even though he was watching an animation video on diabetes, he still had Mega Bloks in the back of his mind.

That, is the Giant Sequoia Tree that I have been talking about in the past. http://www.eikonabridge.com/AMoRe.pdf. That is why autistic people are creative. That is why autistic people manage to see things that no one else can see, and solve problems that no one else can solve.

All scientific discoveries are pretty much done the same way. That is the trick behind the "Ah-hah" light-bulb moments.

The gift of autistic people is in their dedicated special interests. So that, even when they are doing something else, in the back of their mind they still keep those interests running. Those special interests help them establish extremely unusual analogies and correlations.

Once you understand that, you will understand the power of autism. You will understand the gift and joy of having an autistic brain.

It is just sad that most parents out there don't understand the true nature of autism. They all have gifted and talented children. But all these parents want is to mold their children into a neurotypical paradigm. The parents turn their children's lives completely upside-down, and condemn these children into underdevelopment ... until all their children turn out to be comatose adults. And then the parents turn around and say: "my child is low-functioning and that's why he is disabled." Nope. Their children are fine and have always been fine. The problem is we have a low-functioning society, full of low-functioning, intellectually disabled, and very stubborn parents that never work with their hands to communicate with their children.

Ok, so my interest went out the window after writing hiragana ... What was the point of this TL:DR lvl dissertation???

I'm guessing, by your name, that you're of Chinese descent. What made you want to learn Japanese?

It's best not to lump me into any ethnic/cultural group. Most of my best friends have diverse cultural backgrounds. I speak 5.5 languages. Have lived in 3 continents. I am not monolithic. I am not even your typical "bilingual" person. It's best to describe me as an earthling.

To answer your question: my daughter likes Japanese cartoons and songs. That's all on her own initiative. That's the primary reason. A secondary reason is I grew up listening to Japanese songs as well, particularly Enka songs (totally unrelated to what my daughter listen to.) My father speaks Japanese. When my father gets together with my uncle, the two of them talk in Japanese. A few years ago, I used to memorize whole songs by Nakajima Miyuki. I think she is on the spectrum, too, by the way.

This is a public forum. So I apologize for not sharing more details.

This is a video I made a long time ago with my children. You can see my daughter's fascination with Japanese started quite early.