Teaching wasn't too bad today, just very long. I teach from 2 til 9:30, with minimal breaks in between. I'm supposed to have some breaks in there, but they seem to keep getting filled up with Trial Lessons. In one of my classes today one of the boys, Kenshou (he's ten, he's one of my favourites), wasn't feeling so good. I asked him what was wrong and he started going off into this long explanation in Japanese, complete with diagrams on the board. I just kept nodding and then shaking my head in sympathy and saying "mmmm, mhm, yeah, oh, mhm" like as if I knew what he was saying. Then in the middle of one of my private classes we had a substantial earthquake. Not earth shattering or anything, just earth shaking. Ha! Oh, I'm so funny. My student freaked out more than I did. And the weather wasn't so bad either. It was only 27 degrees today. It's currently, at 11 pm, 22 degrees at 73% humidity.
In my adult class tonight we had some very interesting conversations. I quoted Broken Heart. We were talking about divorce as part of the Unit. One of the questions was "Should the parents explain to the children why they are getting divorced?" They're pretty advanced (this is the class that Taeko and Masanobu are in) but all I could really get out of the two students who were there (both middle aged men) was "Oh, I don't know". So I pulled in some big guns. "So, if the parents are getting divorced, should they say to the kids 'Well, Mummy and Daddy just don't love each other any more, so Daddy's going to move away' 'But, but…' 'Now Lisa, you want Mummy and Daddy to happy, don't you?' Should they have to explain the reason?" To which, Masanobu replied with laughter (does he know BH as well??) and said "That's not a reason!!". Ah, what wisdom. I told him it was pretty common for people to get divorced because they don't love each other. They were both appalled. What a difference in perceptions and standards. Masanobu said he wants to live in North America. Masanobu was once in love with a girl in his early twenties. His family had already arranged for a girl for him to marry, so he met that girl on their wedding day and has been married to her since then. He hasn't seen the first girl again. Is this somehow wrong? We had a discussion once up at Malibu (of which I was barely a part of, only I kept some distance as I could see it would go horribly bad) about whether we would agree to an arranged marriage. Some of us said we would, some jokingly said they would just for the sake of argument, others were just as appalled at the thought of an arranged marriage as Masanobu and Susumu were at the thought of getting a divorce because you don't love the person you're married to. Terribly interesting. I can't help but think that there's something to trusting your parents who love you and want the best for you to choose someone who would be a good match. Makes me want to talk to more people who are in arranged marriages. I don't feel right talking to Masanobu about it because he's a man, but I would love to talk to a woman about her feelings and perceptions and whether she has any regrets. It's interesting that when I open up the class to the fabulous game of "Question Bombardment", where one student is bombarded for 2 minutes straight by the other students with any possible questions they can think of then the first student has to answer as many as they can remember, that it's almost always one of the first questions that Masanobu asks "Is (or was) your marriage a love marriage?"
Email me, as adult children, would you trust your parents to an arranged marriage? As parents, what would you consider for your child if you were to be the one who was to decide who they were to marry? I want to know what you think.
