the only difference I saw was the upper right corner of the 2nd symbol should look like this:
but your thing is kind of sideways with two dots instead of right side up with two lines. I'm not really a japanese reader either, but that symbol itself is a kanji I've learned (by itself, it means "month") but kanji commonly uses multiple characters and combines them to make new words. But if you are mimicking a language you don't know at all, it's hard to tell what to look for in terms of actual letter strokes versus personal handwriting flair. (especially if you're looking at brush strokes vs handwritten -- which look very different from each other)
(Imagine a non-english reader seeing this:
and trying to write "quill skill" based off what they see...they'd probably put a lot of marks that aren't normally there...their Q would probably look squared off on top and the tail would be way too long, and all of the "L" letters look like slightly different letters if you don't have the ability to recognize that they're all the same letter) --
Actually, I did some searching. That's EXACTLY what happened here. The tall stroke up top that I thought was out of place is supposed to be the "downstroke" of the brush. (When you write the american "n" there's a downstroke, then it comes back up and makes the rest of the n. With a brush, the little top part of that downstroke is much more pronounced than it is in text or with a pencil.) The dots are also because it's not always easy to make small precise lines with a big thick brush so a small short line lets you get the idea that it's supposed to be a line but you don't want to splotch everywhere.
This looks like your nails:
Here's more images of the word for "hope":
(These are curvier, like someone going faster with the brush and less precise...you can kind of see it morph, but long time readers can still tell it's supposed to be the same thing...me personally if i hadn't looked it up, i wouldn't have been able to tell they were the same lol):
Hand written is on the bottom left which would be I guess the "original"?:
Good job on your nails though
/emoticons/
[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" /> Very cool idea.
