In my essay I shared my free time activities with him. The online classes, the practicing, the radio listening that I do. I lead a fascinating solitary life, especially exciting as relayed in Japanese. Anything to fill the page and our understanding of one another. As he slowly moved through my sakubun I wondered if he saw the upcoming irregularity in the lines of prose. He read that I had listened to haikus about morning on NHK radio and then he broke his concentration, looked up at me and smiled with excitement. His wife writes haikus, she's been writing haikus for 30 years; and he used to write tanka for a newspaper during college (at least this is what I understood or have fabricated). Oh the suspense...it's coming... and then finally he hit. I prefaced the attempt with an explanation using new grammar: the "let's try this and see" grammar. Watashi wa asa haiku o kaitemimashita. (I wanted to try to write a haiku about morning.)
He understood it! Well mostly; but he got that I was trying and was so sweetly encouraging. "I like your haiku very much!" he said in English. Oh, Kaneko-san.
Earlier in the lesson I had watched him once again write something in English, this time about borrowing and lending. "I lend アンドレア the book." He wrote my name in katana. And something in this made me feel that I was familiar to him in a way, that he hears my name in Japanese. I suppose I reciprocate. Every week, several steps closer.
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