"Moshi moshi." (Hello.)
"Eeee to. Koukoku o mite, denwa shiteiru....ikebana o shitemitai." (Ummm. I'm calling because I saw your advert, I'm interested in trying flower arranging lessons.)
If you haven't much experience of learning foreign languages it can be hard to conceptualise what it's like to have a phone conversation in a language in which you are not fluent. Maybe this will help you understand: it's a bit like crawling through a tunnel made of TV static, blindfolded.
Somehow I managed to get through almost the whole thing with complete understanding and with the other person understanding me too. Unfortunately I hesitated for a moment after hearing one particular phrase I wasn't quite sure of, which was enough for her to switch to English for the rest of the conversation. Might have been more convenient, but I can't say my pride wasn't wounded.
We meet outside the subway station. Like a lot of people who teach Japanese stuff to foreigners, she's a tiny sixtysomething lady looking for someone to nurture and chastise now her children are too old for it. She's very kind and her English is good (after my single mistake on the phone, we still never revert back to Japanese). It's raining, and despite the fact that I have waterproofs on, she ushers me furiously under her umbrella. People in Japan get very upset if you don't use an umbrella.
In her flat, several ladies are getting on with flower arranging. I am told her family has lived in this flat for generations, and I suddenly wish I remembered to put on clean socks that day. We settle down to ikebana.
She shows me how to cut the flowers, and how hold the arrangement in place by impaling their stalks on the rather bellicose-looking device known as the "frog". Heavy and covered with spikes, it looks like a rusty metal hairbrush and could definitely be used to kill an intruder. I remind myself to always knock before I enter any room in this house, and to never jump out and shout surprise. She demonstrates a simple arrangement, with a lot of discussion of angles and geometry which I immediately forget. She asks me to copy her arrangement and I get it wrong. The Japanese style of flower arranging is beautiful but very mathematical, and I don't feel I can pass my mistakes off as creative flair. I am inadequate.
As a break from the flowers, she invites me to practice tea ceremony with her. I've practiced Japanese tea ceremony a couple of times before, and enjoy the precision and grace of the somewhat alien rituals. Unfortunately I dislike green tea. Love all other kinds of tea, don't like green tea. The bitterness is supposed to be balanced by eating wagashi, traditional Japanese sweets, just before you have the tea, which would be a perfect solution if I didn't loathe wagashi even more than green tea. (Imagine making a jelly, but instead of putting any flavour in it you just added more sweetener, to the point where even Augustus Gloop would feel like gagging. Imagine your aim is to make it really, disgustingly sweet, but at the same time not have any actual taste. Then add beans. Voila, wagashi.) Nonetheless, I have a go at tea-ing while my teacher tells me about her sliding doors. At the end of the class she realises I don't have any of the equipment I need to take my arrangement home, so she walks me all the way to a secret wholesaler where I can get my own terrifying spiky impalers for cheap. She even takes me to a shrine on the way, just for kicks. And when the wholesaler offers us more wagashi, she clearly notices my face and says it's okay if I don't eat it. The generosity of some people here is wonderful.
I'm not sure if I'll return to ikebana, unless I'm allowed to be some kind of radical about it. I like having flowers around the house though, and the spiky hairbrush of violence, so maybe I'll do a bit at home every now and then. And I really enjoyed my class, just for the experience of meeting such a lovely lady and hanging out for the day. Also for the great sandwich shop I discovered near her house, which does paninis with ciabatta. Do you know how long it's been since I had ciabatta? You never know what you've got until it's gone.
