Tim Jensen confesses that the first time he saw Mitsuo Aida's calligraphy poems his immediate reaction was "I could do that!" Now Aida's greatest fan and translator of three volumes of his work into English, Jensen is not alone in his initial reaction. According to Aida's son Kazuhito, director of the Mitsuo Aida Museum in Ginza, this is the way most people react to his father's work the first time they see it.

"People look at it and think that anyone, even a child, could do the kind of calligraphy my father did, but if they try it for themselves they find they can't," he says. "It's based on a high level of technical ability."

Aida's work is deceptively simple, clear and direct. While most Japanese calligraphers focus on demonstrating their mastery of technique, often producing works in abbreviated, cursive styles that the average Japanese cannot read, Mitsuo Aida's aim was different. A calligrapher who was also a poet in his own right, he wanted people to understand what he was writing, and cultivated a naive style that was both easy to read and helped convey the meaning and emotion behind his poetry.

Born in 1924 in Tochigi Prefecture, Aida began studying calligraphy seriously at the age of 17, but by his mid-20s had become dissatisfied with the traditional world of calligraphy and began developing his own individual style. A meeting in 1942 with Tetsuo Takei (a Zen priest of the Soto sect who became his spiritual mentor) sparked his interest in Zen, and from age 30 Aida began writing short, simple poems based on Zen teachings.

The rest of his life until his death in 1991 was devoted to popularizing Zen philosophy through his calligraphy and poems.

According to Jensen, Aida's message contains important and universal truths.

"When I first saw the writing of Mitsuo Aida I just saw simple words," says Jensen. "But I found the more time I spent reading them, the deeper they brought me. He took very deep Zen ideas and concepts and put them into very simple words and analogies, a kind of layman's guide to Zen philosophy, if you will."

Jensen says that the ideas Aida was trying to convey to the general public are relevant worldwide, not just to a Japanese audience -- one of the reasons he has devoted so much time to translating them into English.

"His basic themes and concepts relate to all human beings regardless of race, sex or nationality. He wrote about living in the here and now, about living life to its fullest now. He wrote about the weaknesses and anxieties that we all as human beings experience, and wrote that the sum of our strength and our weaknesses is actually who we are, and that's all we can really truly be -- basically, it's OK to be ourselves," Jensen explains.

He says that a number of his friends, at down points in their lives, have found strength and encouragement in Aida's words, and becoming the translator for Aida's books proved to be a turning point in Jensen's life as well.

A professional lyric writer, he had been pursuing a career in the music industry in Japan for many years but with only moderate success. One night at a party he met Shinji Seki of Diamond Inc., the company which had previously published three of Aida's books. The two felt an immediate affinity, and Seki asked Jensen if he would translate Aida's works into English and help him introduce Aida's ideas to the world.

Jensen agreed, and for the next year Seki painstakingly explained every word and phrase of the works selected for the first volume, "The Here and Now," discussing the meaning of each poem until Jensen felt he had grasped its underlying meaning and managed to convey its true essence in English. In the process, he reached a new understanding about what he really wanted out of life.

"I was always looking for that big hit, that big something. After writing Mitsuo Aida's works in English, I realized that I was spending so much of my time just wanting money, and chasing something I didn't really want," he says. "One day I just asked myself, is it money that I want? And I said no, that's not what I want. I want peace of mind."

He closed his office in Tokyo and moved to the mountains of Nagano to pursue a simpler life, where, ironically enough, the big break he had been searching for for so long finally found him -- becoming lyric writer for J-pop band the Brilliant Green, with whom he has worked ever since.

"The Here and Now" was published in 1996, and was followed by "A Phrase by My Side" in January 2000, and "Talking to . . ." earlier this month. Jensen says he now feels his lifework is to continue working with Kazuhito Aida and Seki to translate Aida's works into English, and use them as a tool to promote better world understanding.

"Talking to . . ." deals with such universal themes as sorrow, responsibility, learning through direct experience and the effect a person's attitude has on how they perceive the world. One of the poems in the book sums up the best of Aida's philosophy nicely, and provides food for thought for anyone struggling to find balance in their life amid the hectic demands of the modern world:

Things that don't matter, don't matter It's those most important things That we should continue dedicating our most important lives to