It's Sunday. Sundays are the day of my weekly meeting with the friendly, shoulder-shaking, Noboru Kaneko. I've learned more Japanese since last week; I understand more and can say more. And somehow Kaneko-san had a few more English words with which to communicate (though we still had a few exchanges in German). Have we improved that much or just gotten more used to our stilted means of communication? I appreciate his flexibility in allowing me to pick the text book and for correcting assignments that he didn't assign. I appreciate his smile and the way he looks over my left ear when he talks to me and how he lightly laughs whenever he reaches for his dictionary. Perhaps this will flatten over the weeks as we start to work more, as we try to understand one another more. Perhaps as we become more greedy to make sense of things, we will be less allowing to let them slide in a well-meaning smile. I hope not. I hope we can continue to appreciate small strides towards greater clarity and not worry about that which is beyond our grasp.
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