A Weekend of Japanese and Judaism

My name in Japanese...

It is a lazy Sunday evening, I am listening to Classic FM and drinking peppermint tea. My neighbor has just set off some fireworks and giddy like children, Mr C and I ran to window to watch them bloom brightly high up in the night sky. It has been an eventful weekend. Today we went to the Language Show at the Kensington Olympia exhibition hall. We were both curious to see if we might want to study another language some time soon. There were hundreds of stalls of people advertising language courses, centres, teaching materials and language learning apps and programmes. There was a talk from interpreters from the EU Parliament and EU Commission, which was very interesting and I learned how to write my name in Japanese. I bought a small ink stamp that said 'Wunderbar!' and portrayed a tiny man jumping for joy in lederhosen. I think it is meant for German language teachers but I fully intend to use it everywhere: on letters, on envelopes, in notebooks and on wrapping paper at Christmas. Because everything should 'Wunderbar' if possible.

At around 2pm, after consuming a turkey and brie sandwich, Mr C and I headed over to the seminar section to sit in a taster Japanese language lesson. There is only so much Japanese you can learn in 40 minutes, but we thought we would give it a try. The lesson was taught by a middle-aged Japanese woman who did not exactly have a firm grasp on the English language herself. She also shouted into a microphone while standing approximately 2 metres away from us. It was 15 minutes of sitting in the path of a incredibly loud hurricane of Japanese vocabulary and grammar. The audience began to find her more amusing than instructive and there were quite a few giggles across the rows of seats as everyone tried to vainly express themselves in basic Japanese. After 20 minutes or so, Mr C leaned across and whispered in my ear, 'I only have so much time left on this planet and I can't waste any more of it in this session. Can we go?' We slunk away out of the room and went to hang out by a stall promoting the German language.

On the way home we accidentally took the wrong train and ended up on the fast train to East Croydon (which is a few miles out of our way). My husband Mr C practically had a stroke from the frustration of watching our home station whizz by in a blur as the train sped on. I just sat back and tried to enjoy our little detour. It could have been worse. A recent news item about two elderly friends caught my eye. They accidentally caught the wrong train after a day out in London and ended up on the fast train all the way to York in the North of England! At least we did not end up going that far out of our way.
On the way back into town from East Croydon (we had to travel all the way back to Clapham to catch a train out again to our station - so we essentially passed our home on the train twice without being able to get off the train), we had to change carriages as the train was extra long and the platform at our station was short. So as we stumbled about the carriages trying to make our way down the train, the carriage jerked suddenly and I ended up falling on top of a seated passenger. She was gracious about it, but embarrassingly, I pretty much landed right her lap. Needless to say, we were exhausted when we got home despite having only traveled around 5 miles. That is London for you; short distances made longer than they really should be....

Earlier in the weekend Mr C and I attended his step-sister's Bat Mizvah. I have actually been to a Bat Mizvah before. Last year in fact. I attended his other step-sister, Gabby's Bat Mizvah. This year, it was Misha's turn. She has just turned 13 and is all tall, graceful and shy. I remember her as a cute 7 year old, so it was quite emotional watching her sing from the Torah in front of the whole congregation of the local Synagogue. She sang beautifully and was very poised. It was a long service as it contained two Bat Mizvah's, a blessing for a new baby and a celebration of a man turning 70. I am not Jewish, but I did enjoy the morning. It is nice to see a community come together and all the traditions they share. Having a little bit more knowledge of Judaism this time around (last year I was totally nervous and clueless) made the experience a lot more fun and interesting. The community seems very close, harmonious and friendly during the Shabbat service. Although there was some excitable gossiping that went on after the service as everyone took part in the Kiddish and a little bit of tension among some of the families. I suppose that the all communities have their friendships, families, squabbles and tensions.

It left me wondering, what community could I belong to? What community would I ever bring any children into?