Kaneko-san and Beethoven

My weekly Japanese lessons have started to take on a predictability, a pattern, a routine.  I'm not sure what Kaneko-san has in mind coming into it, but from my end I like to stay a chapter ahead of where we are in the lessons so that the lesson of the week is a review.  At this point, the material isn't too challenging.  I don't understand Japanese, but I do understand Minna No Nihongo (Everyone's Japanese), my textbook.  It's like a children's book which says the cow jumped over the moon and I just believe it until I get to the point where the world asks otherwise of me.  I like children's books.

But because the exercises are not very difficult, it doesn't take much for me to read them quickly and feel ready to move on.  Kaneko-san still likes to emphasize things, rereading and stressing certain syllables.  The COW jumped over the MOON.  Mmmm, yes, wakarimashita, I understand.  It's great to hear a native speaker say these things and to remind me of when to pronounce numbers in different ways depending on their context (9 is "kyu," unless it's referring to 9 o'clock in which case it's "ku, " and numerous other situations often with 6 or 8 complicit), but I'm discovering that the real fun time in the lesson, at least for me, is when Kaneko-san trails off from the exercise enough that I can hand him my sakubun, my essay.  It's during this point that we get to start a long exchange of near hits and misses of understanding.

Usually the essay just talks about something from my week, or weekend, or about my daily routine.  This week I wrote about the concerts that we are playing and that I like Beethoven.  And with this a discovery of something common in our blood.  I'm not surprised that Kaneko-san likes Beethoven.    Just as I'm coming to understand Japanese more and more each week,  I'm coming to understand my dear teacher, and to have some set of expectations for his behavior.  When he read that we were playing the 7th Symphony he found the word in the dictionary for "nature." "Ah," I said, "Roku ban," (the sixth).  He looked at me a little confused.  I hummed the pastoral opening of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony and his face lit up as he exploded with excitement.  "Hai, hai!"  he said.  I feel the same way about that melody and getting to sing it in my Japanese lesson.

It feels so satisfying to get a little closer to someone.  Both Kaneko-san and Japanese are a mystery that are slowly revealing themselves to me, one intertwined with the other.  Every week we get a little bit closer to an unreachable goal, like a Zeno's paradox (only I don't think my ignorance has a weekly half-life.)  I don't think the progress is measurable, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist and isn't quite enjoyable in the process.