You can count on it.

それで数えることができる。

この女の子は私に数え方を教えました。近所の野菜店の人は算盤を使って、英語で話さないので、彼女はいつもゆっくり総計を言いました。外の店は小さい計算機があたから、直ちに総計を見せます。でも、さいとさんは違います。特別な人。私に親切で、忍耐です。数を繰り返して、明白に発音したから、女性のおかげで、自信を得ました。

後の英語のポーストは日本語を練習ことについてけど、友情はについてです。

Let me introduce you to Masako-san, my Fruit Stand Lady.  I give her credit for teaching me how to count in Japanese. Numbers are one of the first things they teach you, when you are trying to learn a language, but if you don't use them, if you don't talk, then you don't incorporate them into your vocabulary.  And you really do need to know the numbers in order to function here in Japan.  It's easy to study the numbers 1 through 10, to recite them, associate little pneumonics to help you remember, but then you get into other numbers like 100, 1000, 10,000... all really important numbers of daily life in terms of yen... For example, "Did he say that pizza cost 230 yen, or 2300 yen?... and what is that in dollars?"  ... Answer:  You heard wrong, it was 3500 yen, and that's not quite $30. 

So, if you can learn to count, it really helps your daily life, as well as self confidence, so I want to practice every chance I get. Here in Japan, the store clerks will give me one chance, they'll say the total price in Japanese, maybe pretty fast, and if I don't seem to understand, (because I am thinking, processing what they said and it takes me a minute) then they assume I never will get it and they immediately punch the numbers into a small calculator and whip it around so I can see it.  I pay, and go out.  Opportunity squelched in a flurry of efficiency. 

But Masako-san was different.  For one thing, she doesn't have a calculator, she uses an abacus.  It has been in her husband's family for a very long time, since before the previous emperor, is how she put it.  For another thing, she doesn't speak English at all, but did realize that I was making pitiful attempts to speak Japanese.  Years ago, after I discovered her tiny store in my neighborhood, she went outside her comfort zone and took the time to deal with me.  I'd buy a pack of strawberries, some kyuri (Japanese cucumbers) and a couple of tomatoes, maybe, and her fingers would whiz over the abacus and she'd say Y850 (八百五十円）　HAPPYAKUGOJYUEN... slowly and distinctly pronouncing it, repeating it until I would understand and count out the change.  (I didn't say she was cheap, did I?  We're talking central Tokyo prices here.) She's very kind, very patient. Thanks to her, my confidence went up and I could try practicing Japanese on strangers.  Ouch.  But you know what they say... no pain, no gain.

You could easily miss her fruit stand.  It's really just a hole in the wall along an ever busier street.  I suspect that its been at this location in her husband's family for several generations. Her son, who is very quiet, sometimes fills in for her, and sometimes I catch a glimpse of her husband back in the depths where the customers don't go, but we've never met.  My Japanese is slowly improving but is honestly still quite rudimentary, and many people are too shy to speak with a foreigner if its not necessary.  Once I stopped by for some mikans and Saito-san was extremely talkative.  Some of which I understood.  Her son had a new baby.  Oh, she was just bursting with joy.  Later, I was lucky to stop by and catch the new baby there with her mother.  My calm and patient fruit stand lady had become a beaming and excited new grandmother.  Then... recently, I was on my way to TAC, I waved, as usual when I am just passing by, and she called me in with much enthusiasm.  She wanted me to meet little Mai-chan.  My, she's grown!  She's two now.  And she has her little pink boots on the wrong feet.  HANTAIDESU.  反対です。But she put them on herself... I understood that much. 

Recently I received a very nice note from a lady who I met in a bookstore here in Tokyo a few months ago.  She was just here for a few days to visit her daughter and do some sightseeing.  We met when I tried to help her find a certain book by talking to the Japanese staff, so she knows I've been studying Japanese.  (I'll tell you about this special book some other time.) She said something like... "You must be quite fluent by now..."    Yes... I suppose I should be.  I think I would be IF... I was younger and had a nice soft brain that would absorb the language instead of this cement head.  or IF... I studied more, though honestly I do study quite a bit, and my sensei is wonderful, but of course I do other things besides study Japanese.  And certainly IF I were truly "immersed" and had a real chance to practice on a much more frequent and continuous basis. But then... I'd have a different life, wouldn't I? 

So I make friends and practice as much as they will let me.

Having touched on the subject of counting, I think I'll share these pix of the  guy doing the traffic analysis at a major intersection.  I thought that was interesting.  I'm not exactly sure, but it seems like he's counting vehicles coming from all the different ways, those that turn, go straight.  Probably an important thing for someone to know.  And then there's the guy measuring the seismic activity on the sidewalk next to the Russian Embassy.