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MARSHALL - One Marshall student learned to write his name in a foreign language when Susan Armington showed 11 Marshall Middle Schoolers how to write Japanese characters Tuesday and Wednesday.

The system of writing is known as kanji, Armington said, and it's similar to Chinese characters.

"In Japan, people study this for years and years and years," said Armington, who was visiting Marshall from Compas as part of a $4,400 grant from the Japan Foundation. The grant was written by John Bowden, who said Marshall was "one of the few in the nation to get this grant." Armington also brought writing brushes from the Japanese government.

"It's an art all by itself," Armington said. "Kanji are very important in Japanese culture."

She brought a little Japanese culture into the Marshall Public Schools Nov. 2-18 by working with the first- graders at Park Side on such projects as miniature Japanese gardens in boxes, windsock flying fish on a stick, and tanabata, which is a wishing tree. She only had two days to work with the middle school students on the kanji.

She showed the middle schoolers how to make about a half dozen different symbols, which had meanings like mountain, tree, fire and river.

"You have to do the lines in the proper order," Armington told the students, "otherwise the character will not look right."

Once the kids had practiced making the characters in pencil, Armington said, "We'll paint them with sumia ink on practice paper, then on watercolor paper." The kids would paint pictures of the character's meaning, such as a mountain in the background for the character for mountain. "Start with postcards, then make bigger pictures if we have time," Armington said.

Power Yang did not expect to learn how to write his name when he came to class, but liked learning "how to write and what they mean," he said.

"The letters - they have cool symbols," Yang said.

"I like the symbols. Power is a good one," said Fue Her, who liked learning "about the Japanese symbols. They're awesome."

Michael Escamilla was enjoying "the whole thing."

Shianne Hasert liked "painting with ink."

"It's kind of fun to learn something new. And I like to paint," said Angie Newville. "I think it's kind of cool they have one symbol that means a whole word."

"This is a good basic introduction to kanji," Armington said, adding she hopes the kids learn "that there's a whole different way of writing in Japanese and Chinese. There's an art of writing that's much more different than ours. The main thing I want them to have is a good feeling about Japan and Japanese culture."

She learned about Japanese culture after marrying a Japanese man, Yuichi Kuboka. She wanted their two sons, Kiyoshi and Nico, to learn about their heritage, so when they were little, she took them to Japan for what she originally thought would be three and a half months. She wound up getting a job teaching English at a national university; Armington has a masters in English as a second language and linguistics. She and the boys stayed for two and a half years; she and her husband have lived in Minneapolis for 20 years. After she came back, she decided to concentrate on her love of art and enjoys teaching what she knows to the students.

"I thought it was really fun," Armington said, adding she was impressed with "how good these kids are at it."