In looking for community activities, I came across the Claremont Forum. It sponsors the Farmers and Artisans Market, which I have patronized for 2 of the 4 Sundays I have been here. It also has a bookstore and the Prison Library project, and the events include a weekly writer's workshop, music performances and documentary screenings and...Japanese language lessons?! I noted the details and gave the Forum a call. Apparently, the lessons are one-on-one, taught by a woman who is also a fabric artist. Her name is Sumi Foley, and Forum took my name and number and promised to let her know I was interested in her lessons. We played telephone tag for a few days, but finally connected, when I learned that I can't afford to take lessons from her: she charges $50 for each hour-long session, which is reasonable for a personal lesson, but not in my budget. I decided, though, that it would be interesting to meet with her and get some basics down, preparatory to using Mango or some other free online course. And, I liked her artwork. It's not a reasonable way to pick a teacher, but I'm in an unreasonable sort of lifestyle right now. So, we set a date for Tuesday, July 18. My plan was to meet her at 12:30 and then drive to the Descanso Gardens, 45 minutes away, for the 3rd Tuesday free admittance.
The Claremont Forum is located in an old citrus packing house in downtown Claremont. It takes up a city block. The concrete facing of the outside is softened by stairs and outdoor restaurant seating with umbrellas and huge planters. I walked up the steps and into a wide hall, with a wine shop to the right and several other shops to the left, a very high ceiling with girders, and other bits of industrial chic decor. The floors were highly polished wooden slabs of varying lengths. The entry hall T'd into another hall. The Claremont Forum bookstore was situated at the end of the right leg of the T, so of course I turned the other direction and explored: there was a Pilates studio, a cooking school, and a community art space, which seemed geared towards the kids. That side of the hall emptied into an outside pedestrian street. Coming back to the bookstore, I peered in the door and then turned around to see Sumi walking towards me. I'm not sure where she came from, as it became clear she'd already been in the bookstore setting up, and I hadn't seen her in the hall; but then again, I tend to be oblivious. She was around 5'4, small boned, in her late thirties, with shoulder length black hair, very clear skin, and the almond-shaped eyes of the Japanese. I asked her what part of Japan she was from, and promptly forgot her answer. But later, as we discussed food, she said that Osaka was the town for foodies, so I'd guess she was from an area near there. Looking at the map and trying to hear her voice, I think it may have been Wakayama, which is next to Osaka Prefecture, to the southeast.
It was a warehouse sort of bookstore, with metal shelves and crates and boxes of books located at the back, and space for tables in the middle. A large double-sided cart was parked outside, filled with paperbacks and sale books. A young man with a bun sat at a packing crate desk by the front doors, which were tall glass framed in wide wood with wooden cross bar handles. Sumi and I walked towards a white-grey plastic, narrow, rectangular fold-up table in the center of the room. A similar table was set closer to the shelves, a few feet away, and two young women were seated there, reading it seemed. I sat facing the shelves, and Sumi sat across from me. She pulled out pens and paper from a brightly colored plastic folder, and we began our lesson.
I said I mainly wanted to be able to read menus and street signs and get around. So, we started with hello (Konnichiwa), I'm Kari (Kari desu), what is this? (Kore wa nani desu ka). I learned sentence structure: you start with the subject, followed by a word like wa, then the object, then sometimes a word like ga followed by a descriptive, ending with a verb. If it's a question, the format is the same, but you end with "ka." Sumi described a Japanese sentence as a train: the Engine (subject), followed by a connector (wa), then the cars (object etc), each with a connector (ga), and finally the caboose (verb). So in the above sentence, Kore (this) is the engine, wa the connector, nani (what) is a car, and desu (is/ar) is the caboose, with ka designating that it's a question.
Sumi expressed doubt that I had never studied Japanese before, but eventually attributed my ability to my musician's ear and quick mind. "You'll have no problem at all, your face is so mobile, and that smile..." It's an easy language: not specifically tonal, no complicated phrasing and possessives that I could see. The numbers are obvious, 1 through 10 (ichi, ni, san...jyu); then it all depends on placement. ni jyu ni is 2-10-2, or twenty-two. I conjectured how the numbers would work. Sumi sat back and shook her head in disbelief, and then we got into the hundreds, which work the same way.
The really great thing is that Japanese doesn't have an "r" sound, per se: it's more like an "l." So, my one modest speech impediment (as the high school speech contest judge termed it), my inability to say an "r" (not to mention the Spanish trilled "r") is no impediment here.
As always, I found myself starting to speak German, as I practised the simple phrases she taught me. Instead of trying to speak Japanese, I was trying to NOT speak English. And, I thought about V's comment when she was visiting and I was studying for a Spanish quiz: you don't learn a language by memorizing vocabulary and verb tenses. You learn it by having it in your ears and by speaking it. Fortunately, I no longer have the shyness gene: I don't mind speaking poorly, just as I don't mind singing poorly. I belt it out as best I can. (Why, then, am I so timid when it comes to playing the solo violin?) So, I experimented with the tiny vocabulary and Sumi was pleased with me. I was pleased with me, too. There's something to be said about taking a one-on-one class: you get undivided attention, and you can move at your own learning pace.
The last bit of the session was spent trying to write characters. Japanese is written left to right, with the lines read from the top of the page to the bottom. But, it is also written top to bottom, in which case the lines go right to left. Confusing. She didn't have the list of characters for me to take away with me, so I wrote down my e-mail address for her to send me a copy. And as I was writing this blog, I discovered that I had walked away with the address, piling it in amongst my notes as we cleared away and set up our table for some Claremont Forum volunteers.
Clearly, I have not been studying much.
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