Tom

I started taking Japanese classes. In my former life in Yamagata, once a week I would meet 'Kiki', or Tokiko Suzuki to give her her real name. She and I would chat in Japanese for an hour or more and that was as far as my schooling went. Once or twice she took me out for something to eat. Once we went to a soba noodle restaurant called KiriKiri tucked away in a quiet suburb near Tendo. The home-made tofu was so fresh it was still warm. Soft and grainy and eaten with a smooth wooden spoon. The tempura was crisp, the soba cut to perfection and the surroundings seemed like a refined farmhouse restaurant. On the way back she let me drive her top-down sports kei-car (one of those cars with a teeny engine) and I only felt a little bit like a toy-boy chauffeur... Anyway, a brief period of lessons with a Japanese lady from the International Centre who had time and a textbook aside, I taught myself Japanese, as is the fashion in the north.

I was excited to join MLC. I joined a class specifically orientated towards passing the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December, so I guess I have no reason to complain about how dry the lessons can sometimes seem. We study by grammar point. We read through example sentences using the grammar point and then try to come up with sentences of our own, cold. There are listening tests and kanji tests and to be honest, as materials I can't readily get my hands on, those and the expensive fee I paid at the start for the month are the only reasons I'm still going to the classes.

My classmates: an American girl and a Vietnamese girl, both of whom I was excited to meet at first. I foresaw heads knocked back in laughter by the water-cooler, a shared discovery of the finer points of Japanese, perhaps going out for a drink after a lesson to chat about life in the big city. But they scarper as soon as the lesson is done. There's no interest in any kind of conversation before the lesson, in awkward moments when we've arrived before the teacher has. It's not exactly what I expected.

With this in mind, on Tuesday I welcomed Tom, the perennial absentee. A slightly older guy with a thick cotton shirt and glasses and a very quiet demeanour, I thought Tom would balance things out a bit in the classroom. Tom could read kanji very well, but when it came to coming up with example sentences of his own, he struggled and passed several times before the teacher apparently decided he shall not pass. He agonised over it for a while. The teacher tried to prop up a sentence, probing him for words and suggesting the correct verb form. Tom carried on sweating it out and then suddenly, he started to gather up his books. He'd had enough. He packed his things quickly and awkwardly squeezed out of the tight, souless classroom while the teacher remained bemused and completely at a loss as to what to do.

I don't think we'll see Tom again. Which is a shame, as I won't have a chance to congratulate him on the bravest thing I've seen anyone do since I've been in Tokyo. Tom, I salute you. It's time I followed your example, quit the bland lessons and found another Kiki.