Lunch with two Araki-sensei

The Araki-sensei

Izusen temple restaurant - nesting bowls

Zen Garden at Daitoku-ji

28 February 2012

Soon after we arrived at Shugakuin International House, I started attending a weekly Japanese conversation class run by Araki-senesei, a charming, and multi-lingual woman, somewhere near my own age.  Win comes when he can.  Our conversation group is an an ever-changing mix of foreigners and their partners, most from China and the Indian sub-continent.  She teaches us how to be polite,  how to introduce ourselves,  how to ask simple questions,  and how to describe our hobbies, which is a vital component of introductory Japanese conversation.  She sneaks in a surprising amount of grammar and vocabulary.  She also teaches us about the national holidays and festivals, which happen at least every other week. She teaches us about food and tea. Sometimes, like the primary schoolers we are here in Japan, we have hands-on sessions where we cook little things, and fold paper. She has been true life line for me.

I suggested we go out to lunch together sometime.  Thus she and her husband, a retired mathematics professor (Princeton Ph.D. in the time of Albert Einstein) from Kyoto University, our American friend Berg (a soon-to-be Sandskrit Ph.D.), Win and I went out to lunch at a "famous" temple restaurant called Izusen, at Daitoko-ji Temple. Temple restaurants are always vegetarian.  We had about 30 items, arranged in about five courses. At the end of the meal we each had before us, in addition to many other small plates and bowls, a beautiful set of about eight nesting red lacquer bowls, which, under the guidance of our mathematician co-host, we put into lovely order when the meal was over.  

Then we passed some charming hours in the afternoon walking through one of Kyoto's major dry landscape Zen gardens.  We ended with tea at a traditional tea house, and a stroll to the bus.

I will greatly miss Araki-sensei when we leave.

Love to all