The linguist and the deep fried patty

For someone who's published 32 books in linguistics (likely exaggerated), he had an incredibly amusing habit of repeating the last three words of every sentence three time. "I have been to Canada, been to Canada, been to Canada". I never asked him his name, but I imagine he is a relative of Jacob two-two. 

He was a linguistics professor at Kyoto University, and I was lost. After spending 10 minutes staring at a map I came to the realization that though I knew where I was, I had no idea where I was going. But apparently at the rip old age of 24 (plus or minus 50) this guy was going to get me to cooking class if it meant running the holy gauntlet.

When someone usually asks me a question about English it typically starts with the words, how do you say...  but two-two said he had a question about english, then stopped and pulled out an inch thick dictionary manuscript that I was to edit. When I would point out an error, he would stop, mull it over and eventually correct it, taking an excessively long time to do it, so I decided a little more grace with grammar correction was needed. After that if he noticed I was looking up for any extended period of time would tap the sheets and say concentrate, in that laughing, but I'm not actually joking sort of way. 

The Japanese can be so utterly polite when put on the spot that they often go to extraordinary lengths to help the lost foreigners. In this case, it meant walking 20 minutes out of his was to hand deliver me to the second floor room I was meant to be at an hour earlier.

There were about 30 people, 6-7 of which were foreigners at the Kyoto Cooking Circle (Japanese reference to a club) and we made udon...something big and deep fried, with a rice dish. Though this was not exactly a tantalizing menu, I did learn how to make a mean broth and next month is hand rolled sushi and red bean desserts, both a personal favourite.