In my last long email, I was telling you about visiting Keiko Sakamoto, but ran out of time to tell you about the rest. Nor had I described the house of Keiko and her husband, Tetsuo. It was on a narrow, cobbled street a ten minutes' drive south of the city, with a small, raised concrete terrace in front lined with neat pots of plants. Keiko slid the glazed glass door open to let me in to the genkan, the foyer where shoes are taken off and slippers put on. There was an angled step up into the house, under the ledge of which shoes were neatly lined in a row. Mine joined them, and I came through sliding glass doors into a comfortable room with a Western-style dining table and chairs (runner, placemats and chair cushions all hand-made by Keiko) on one side and a kotatsu (table with a heater attached to the underside and blankets draped over it) near the window, where we could admire the garden, though Keiko said it was at its winter worst, and I should come back in the spring. The main part of the garden was pebbled, with rows of potted plants (including, remarkably for this time of year, flowering pansies), and a tiled centre with a low table and stools. Around it were square hedges, and beyond that some trees and bushes that birds were darting among with twittering delight. To the left was a taller hedge of what I would call wild roses, still pink but past their prime. Although it not the custom in Japan for people to give tours of their houses (some parts of the house are public, some private), Keiko showed me the spartan, elegant Japanese-style dining room with a low dining table, legless chairs and tatami mats. We took off our slippers to enter this room; no one with any manners walks on tatami mats with any kind of footwear. In the small room to the right of this one, also overlooking the garden, Keiko showed me a glass cabinet. Most houses in Japan have small shrines, mostly Buddhist in nature, honouring the gods and deceased relatives. Keiko's husband is Christian, so the cabinet contained a metal crucifix and a picture of the Pope. But it also had two humble wooden tablets marked with kanji; Buddhist prayers for Tetsuo's parents. I find that people in Japan seem to have a mix-and-match approach to religion. It is not that they are any less reverent, but their pantheon is bigger, maybe, or their Shinto origins leave more room for other options.

But here was the most wonderful part of my visit. After we had talked for a couple of hours after lunch, our talk turned to clothing. I asked her about yukata, or summer kimonos, because I haven't seen any and wondered what they were like. Keiko lit up and insisted on taking me upstairs (with many unnecessary apologies for its untidiness) to a room between two bedrooms, with many cabinets and drawers. Here she showed me her daughter's yukata. It was made like a kimono; a long simple robe with mid-length sleeves that wraps in the front, but the material was of starched cotton, and it was a beautiful deep blue ("Japan blue," Keiko said, "very traditional") with white birds printed on it. It is held in place with a simpler obi than a kimono uses; Keiko's was a muted dark red.

Not content with this, she opened a wardrobe, with several long narrow shelves that had neat, uncreased bundles of hand-made white paper. Each of these held a carefully folded and wrapped kimono, and she showed me many of them, draping them over me as I ohhed and ahhed in appreciation. Her wedding kimono was made of puckered silk, with long flowing sleeves, and brightened from creamy white to a vivid orange at the hem. Another was a beautiful purplish-pink, with birds and flowers printed on it. But her favourite was pewter-gray with golden sheaves of wheat printed or painted on it and deep burgundy sleeves and hem. She shyly suggested I could wear one of them, if an occasion demanded it. She is too generous. She had many obis, to mix and match with the kimono, and a variety of elastic pins and stays to keep them on. It looks extremely complicated to put a kimono on properly; apparently some women hire themselves out as dressers for special occasions. I've passed a number of bright kimono shops, and admired the bright, smooth fabrics, but in those stores a typical kimono will cost anywhere from $2,000-$4,000 yen, so I won't be buying one any time soon. In Geisha of Gion, a memoir I just read, Mineko Iwasaki describes special kimonos made for her that cost as much as a house.

This was a long week. I taught 21 classes, and spent the week playing catch-up to make sure I was ready for each class. Some of the advanced classes, where students are willing and able to ask questions, are a delight to teach; others take a lot of energy, and I have to always remind myself to talk slowly and simply, so as not to confuse or frustrate students. On top of all this, Ryoko and Mayumi, the manager and assistant manager, are very busy trying to drum up new students for the coming year, so when a "Prospective" comes in, the atmosphere gets tense. It takes a long time and kid glove handling to "bag" (my word, not anyone else's) a new student, and I am usually sent out to "casually" engage the student in conversation. This has two purposes; the student talks to a native English speaker and is encouraged to join AEON, and I can theoretically help to judge the student's English level. I'm not very good at this yet though. I like my private lessons a lot; I get to know the students better this way, and can give my full attention to an individual. But the group lessons are fun, too. The hardest is grammar, partly because I'm still essentially back in grammar boot camp, remembering ancient lessons from elementary school. I'm looking forward to the point, months away, when I will have taught every class in the cycle and can begin them again with more familiarity and understanding.

Not only are we all women now at the AEON office, but I think we're all spinsters, too. Ryoko is in her early forties, but like many unmarried Japanese, she lives at home with her mother. The other day, she asked if I had any problems at my apartment. I said no, but asked a question about recycling milk cartons. She paused, then with a hint of embarrassment, said she'd have to ask her mother. Mayumi Nozu, the assistant manager, works constantly; she just got an AEON award for best assistant manager of 2006 for her efforts, but can't have much of a social life. The business language of the office is Japanese, as Ryoko and Mayumi Nozu are more comfortable speaking that than English. It's hard - when they talk to me, the conversation is often stilted, because we both have to speak slowly and carefully to be sure we are understood. But they sound so relaxed and fun when they speak with Mayuni-sensei in Japanese. I feel very separate, though I am starting to pick up words here and there in the conversation.

At lunch, I eat my bento (although I had to draw the line at the tiny, crunchy whole fish(es) that came with the meal last week; the texture was too unappealing), then I usually slip across the street to Mister Donut for my coffee before evening classes. This has the unfortunate result that I've eaten a lot of donuts this week. On the plus side, I can soon get a cheap, triangular lamp with my accumulated Misdo Club points. (I noticed in my apartment that two of the cups have Mister Donut logos on them, so I take comfort in the fact that I am not the first gaijin to seek refuge at Mister Donut). I can't really describe the deep pleasure I get as I drip cream into my coffee and watch it bloom at the surface. Coffee, now that I don't drink it every day, has become a visceral delight for me. I like to watch the people, too. A lot of high school students and aging housewives meet at Misdo in the late afternoons to talk and have a treat. The high school students all wear uniforms; the boys look like proto-businessmen in theirs, while the girls have the prerequisite pleated skirts.

On Saturday night I bucked out of the office just after seven to make my way to the budokan for 7:30. Entering the gym (and bowing), I got a delighted shock. On the side of the gym without mats, a kendo practice was just ending. As I warmed up, I couldn't take my eyes off them. Kendo is the way of the sword, and is certainly one of the more complicated Japanese martial arts in terms of equipment. There were about twenty in the class, (all men I think) dressed in flowing, dark blue hakama, with oval face masks (like for fencing, but elongated), head coverings and armour for the torso and arms. Their 'swords' are made of several bamboo slats tied together. The image was striking, and I was awed and impressed, even as they took off their helmets and began saying their farewells to each other.

Aikido practice was great. We had a different teacher this week, possibly the head of the dojo, but with the language gap I can't say for sure. Some of what we practiced were nikyo techniques familiar to me, and some were new variations on familiar maneuvers. We finished by throwing our partners twenty times each, so I got plenty of rolling practice, then did a familiar exercise (the name escapes me, and I can't find it in my books on aikido; maybe Pat can tell me...) where partners kneel opposite each other, one gripping the other's wrists. The held partner pushes her arms forward, concentrating on knocking the other person off-balance and onto his back. The better your energy is, the easier it is to unbalance your partner. I like it, but I'm not very good at it yet.