Happy New Year

The first character is 'bright', it can also mean to 'open' as in 'congratulations on opening the new year'.
Let's hope 2008 is a bright year for many. Also, this is the very first character I have written all year! I picked up the brush, and wrote it, first try.

The other character, (like owaru in the post below) is on it's side, but it means 'rat' as in 'year of the rat'. I actually wrote it yesterday.

Greetings from next year!