A Piano Lost in a Forest, Fox Are Out
BY SUI WANG
In Tokyo, I didn’t have to pretend I was somewhere else, I was somewhere else. My cooking school instructor asked me to wear gloves. My doorman, Sato-san, exhausted every English word he knew to greet me, usually in an order they were never meant to be. At a jazz bar, I met someone and we spent the night trading lyrics through Google Translate. She typed furiously, held up her phone, it said: “a piano lost in a forest fox are out.”
That’s about as far as Google Translate got me: mistranslated, bizarrely poetic code I tried to decipher. Mounting guilt when I made strangers struggle to explain how the coin locker system worked. In this shared guilt, Noa and I found each other. She looked Japanese when she didn’t speak. She did speak a little, to be fair. One of the first things she spoke about was her childhood in Boston. It turned out our childhoods in Boston were two hours apart.
Over the first month, I sat next to Noa in language class because we both belonged more to that room than to the world outside. When I spoke, Ms. Ishikawa tilted her head as if tuning a radio dial, searching for the frequency beneath the static. In the first row sat a Chinese woman, Yu, who knew a lot of kanji and was mostly quiet. When Ms. Ishikawa wrote a new character on the board, she often turned to Yu. Jay worked in banking and arrived late every time, breathless and apologizing in English, then Japanese, then English again. Language was a hallway he kept entering from the wrong end. Jay used to learn French at school, part of his British upbringing. “Forgot all of it. It’s like losing a part of your mouth.” Mr. and Mrs. Henderson always wore matching fleece jackets, cornflower blue. They referred to each other as “Henderson-san,” politely re-enacting their marriage in this new polite formality. Noa sat by the window in deliberate expensive black. The first week, Ms. Ishikawa assumed Noa was fluent and kept asking her to model answers, until her accent slipped out. Unlike us, Noa could hide hers if she stuck to heirloom phrases, the ones she’d practiced for years via Skype with her grandmother in Fukuoka.
Noa wrote her notes in block letters, slow and careful. I copied her sometimes, just to see what it felt like to write like that. When we did the paired exercises, I found myself speaking to her and not to the teacher, not even to myself. “私の父は忍者です(My father is a ninja).” I wanted her to nod at what I said, even if the sentence wasn’t real. Even if she didn’t fully understand. Even if I barely did. Understanding wasn’t the point. We were there to get it wrong in front of each other until we got it less wrong.
It took us an entire cherry blossom season to start saying real things about our own lives. The language barrier made us shy. It removed our humor like peeling the skin off a lychee. Ms. Ishikawa gave us lists of practice questions: What did you eat for breakfast yesterday? Where would you go if you had one million yen? Do you like cats or dogs better, and why? By week nine, we knew more about each other than anyone else in the city, who had cat hair allergy, who believed in ghosts, who took Latin in school and regretted it.
⁃ “What did you want to be when you were a child?” I asked.
⁃ “I wanted to be a child,” she said.
After I quit the college admission job, I signed up for the Japanese cooking course. Its poster reminded me of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation: a high‑rise bar, city lights smeared across the window like wet paint, two people suspended in jet‑lag hush. I only ever watched that film on rainy days. It’s best watched under a blanket, the way Scarlett Johansson watches herself be bored. Loneliness, when not aestheticized, reveals itself as vague appetite. I speculated that cooking might be the nearest honest way to feed it.
I also speculated that cooking might be an easier language than Japanese. Something you could taste your way through, even if you didn’t know the words. Mr. Kenji, our instructor, kept telling us to “respect the angle of your blade”. He didn’t allow us to write any notes during his demonstration. “Your eyes and ears and nose remember better.”
So we chopped and stirred and panicked in sheer silence, our ears open and hands flying. My eyes remembered as much as they could. They translated Mr. Kenji’s precise movements into the angle of my knife. Mr. Kenji watched me julienning an onion. He stood at the edge of my station, arms crossed. Only when I paused to adjust my grip did he reach over, take the knife from my hand, and say, “You’re fighting it.” One time I put in too much sugar, the tsukemono came out syrupy. Kenji picked up the plate and carried it to the back like it was a dead pet. I wanted to apologize, but my language class hadn’t covered the etiquette of culinary disasters.
The cooking class was arguably more linguistically challenging, because not many classmates spoke English. On top of phrases like “restroom”, “train station”, I needed to learn “soy sauce”, “egg”, and “stir”. I always made them wait when we passed condiments around. I suspected my ruined dishes stemmed more from misunderstood instructions than bad technique. While I was fumbling for the word for “pork cheek”, my phone buzzed in my apron.
Sam (Sky Admissions): still alive??
Sam: we’re drowning in essays about saving sea turtles. miss your cynicism
Sam was my former colleague who probably imagined me backpacking through Europe and finding spirituality. The kind of gap year story our students wrote about in their personal statements, all glowing revelations in night buses and sudden clarity on mountaintops. She didn’t know that I’d applied for the cooking program in Japan the same week I found out about Marcus and Elena’s engagement. He got her a topaz ring, her birthstone. I closed the tab, reopened it, then zoomed in. He used to say it looked like a cough drop. I used to love those odd comparisons of his, even when they turned on me.
The ring yanked me out of a long sleep. My job at the company was to sand down the edges of high schoolers into glossy résumés. The most forgettable kid in the suburbs could become a world-saving visionary if you swapped the right verbs. I’d type “founded” instead of “started,” “led” instead of “helped.” I’d sit in my cubicle, editing their sentences about overcoming adversity and discovering passion, then go home to my studio apartment and watch Netflix until I fell asleep with my laptop burning a rectangle on my chest. It’s kind of funny, if you think about it—to coach someone else through their future when you are just barely getting by at your own.
After language class, Noa and I would walk two blocks down to the small convenience store at the corner. The walk took exactly seven minutes. The store sold individually wrapped pastries, instant ramen cups, alongside items you couldn’t believe someone had ever urgently needed—like single eggs, panda-print ties, and mini lint rollers. We always picked out melonpan, the fluffy bread wrapped neatly in plastic. We’d sit outside on a low brick wall, beneath a chrome-yellow streetlamp, peeling open the wrappers slowly.
The air carried a dampness that stuck to our necks. Bicycle bells tinged down the alley. We talked about what came next, our futures painted in hesitant phrases. Noa said she wanted to stay till she’s fluent enough to speak at her grandma’s funeral, when it came. I said I wanted to cook in Kyoto for a year and learn to make dashi from scratch. We said these things like trying on someone else’s coat. Sometimes we practice for lives we might never live, but the practice itself is still sweet.
It was the first time I felt that talking about your future with someone could make you feel closer, even as it quietly outlined your parting paths. A kind of premonition dressed as closeness.
Noa broke the melonpan into segments. “It’s softer inside,” she’d always say, offering me a piece from the middle. Her face had started to take on the quality of an old photo: beautiful in a way that already felt like memory. I’d catch her reflection in the convenience store window, distorted slightly by shelves of canned coffee and glossy magazines. That ghostly, doubling mirror-image made her seem impossibly pretty — and a little like she was slipping away.
During class breaks, we carved out this space between us, where English gave us back our personalities. We were still two shy people making brief, polite conversations. But we were finally free. We took the language to places, instead of following it into dark corners we got lost in.
In English, I heard her saying things like “circles are frustrating,” or “hugs feel more intense when they’re badly timed.” Her grandmother, she told me one day, is a Japanese poet who collects Jamaican records. “She writes short poems about bamboo or melancholic women,” Noa said. “My mom would translate them for me, print them all out, so much paper for such short poems.”
Our secret corner wasn’t always ours alone. Occasionally, Yu and Jay would join us as a bigger group. Jay carried the scent of stale coffee and printer toner, a portable bubble of his high-pressure world. He liked to ask questions like an HR manager. “How would you describe your role in a…” he forgot the word for team, then mimed people standing in a circle. I thought he was drawing a pizza.
Yu spoke fast and peppered her sentences with fillers. “Ano (あの)…” She worked as a product manager in a fast food company. It was hard to picture her talking a lot about frying oil viscosity or burger menu design.
Noa was watching a moth beat itself against the lamp, wings stuttering in the yellow light. She said, “I’m the kind of person who says I’ll do something and does it.” She worked a part-time job at a studio that designed small toys, such as tiny ramen bowls and miniature boom boxes. It was easier to imagine Noa fiddling with colorful gadgets than Yu devouring fast food.
I tend to be my own team. I said. No one knew what it meant, and none of us had the grammar to ask. “Hai.” Jay nodded, wrapping up the interview.
As my knife skills improved, I started bringing leftovers from cooking class to share during language break. I packed them in mismatched containers, still warm, tucked into a tote I kept under my desk. Mr. Henderson was always the first to notice. “Ooh—smells fancy today,” he’d say, peering over his reading glasses. Mr. Henderson loved the green tea mochi. He popped three in his mouth before his wife could stop him. “Henderson-san,” she said, mildly horrified.
Jay asked if the mochi was gluten-free. “This one’s got… beans?”
“Red bean,” I said.
“Beans wrapped in flour.” he muttered, not judging exactly, just confused.
Yu was a firm believer of camera eats first. She photographed everything meticulously on her digital camera. It’s hard to tell if she actually liked the food I brought.
Noa always finished whatever I brought her. Even the failed salty miso soup. “I messed up the proportions.” She shrugged, “it tastes fine! My grandma taught me it’s rude to leave food unfinished.” Drinking the last sip, she added, “Besides, I kind of like the salt. Salt used to be trendy.”
I asked her if she ever cooked.
She shook her head. “My mom doesn’t let me near the kitchen. She says I waste half of the potato when I peel.”
“Sounds like your grandma and your mom need to duke it out.”
She smiled. “My grandma would win. Quietly.”
Sam also thought I was brave. “I could never just pack up and move to Asia,” she’d said at my goodbye drinks, like Japan was some exotic wilderness instead of a country with better public transportation than ours. She probably thought that I’d abandoned everything I had built for a spiritual breakthrough. I didn’t tell her enough to make her think otherwise. Surrounded by people who also didn’t quite fit, I felt more like a coward who’d gotten lucky.
By early summer, Ms. Ishikawa gave us more time for paired conversations to prepare for the oral exam. That day’s prompt was simple: 「ペットについて話してください。」 Talk about a pet.
Jay asked if it could be made up.
Ms. Ishikawa said, “Yes. But real feelings help grammar stick.”
Since Yu was absent, Noa and I paired off again. Her handwriting had gone looser lately.「いま、私は犬がいます。」 I have a dog now, she said. 「でも、その犬は私のじゃありません。」 But the dog isn’t mine. Then she switched to English, “It was my grandmother’s dog, actually.” I looked up, but she kept her eyes on the workbook.
Ms. Ishikawa cleared her throat from the front, looking at us. “No English.”
I wrote in my workbook: 「私の猫は死にました。」 My cat died.
Then I crossed it out and wrote: 「私は猫がいませんでした。」 I never had a cat.
Noa was still writing about the grandmother’s dog. Her Japanese was getting more complex. Grief had unlocked some grammar she’d been hoarding. 祖母の犬は悲しいです。新しい家で一人ぼっちです。」Grandmother’s dog is sad. Alone in the new house.
Ms. Ishikawa was drifting between pairs, nodding approvingly at the Hendersons, who were acting out a full skit involving a hamster. Noa returned to Japanese.
「犬は毎日玄関で待っています。」 The dog waits at the door every day.
I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say in Japanese. I didn’t know what I wanted to say.
The next week, Ms. Ishikawa had to take a weekend off. Her assignment for us was to write a personal essay. When I got stuck on the essay, I chopped onions. When I cried too much from chopping onions, I went back to the essay. I wrote those sentences in hiragana first, then looked up the kanji. I typed them into my draft, deleted them, rewrote them in a different order.
「ボストンはアメリカの都市です。」Boston is a city in the United States.
「わたしはピアノをひきました。」 I played the piano.
「わたしは、もうひいていません。」 I don’t play anymore.
I crossed out the second line and replaced it with:
「わたしはピアノが好きです。」 I like piano.
It wasn’t true, but it was easier to conjugate.
I wanted to ask Noa how her essay was going. I assumed hers would be about the dog. Maybe she would make up a pet entirely. Maybe she would change it for grammatical convenience.
The essay deadline pressed like a thumb against a bruise. I wanted to write about Boston Common in spring: how the willow branches dipped into the duck pond like green seams stitching water to sky. How I used to sit there after piano lessons, fingers humming with scales, watching tourists in swan boats. I realized I had quite a lot to say. Just like people always do with their childhood. But my Japanese couldn’t really get me close to any of the texture of Boston Common, nor help me comfort Noa.
When I wrote, the sentences read like locking a symphony inside a tin can. I handed in my essay the analog way. After many years of editing students’ essays on laptop, I started to use ink again. My clumsy sentences need clumsy visuals.
In the class, Ms. Ishikawa asked us to exchange essays and read them out loud. Jay was finally early. He was constantly confusing「あした」 (ashita, tomorrow) with 「あさ」 (asa, morning). “I never really know what day it is anymore.” In front of the class, he was reading Yu’s essay very slowly, which was about camera and cherry blossoms, a kind of flower in her hometown blooming twice each year. I could only catch words like seasons and beauty. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson were reading each other’s essay in staccatos with a newfound surprise. Mrs. Henderson was reasonably confused: “Henderson-san, you had a hamster? Also a sister?” Apparently, we were allowed to make up as many sisters as we wanted in our essay.
Or having a grandma who hasn’t left us yet. Noa placed the essay on the desk instead of passing it to me. A folded A4, edges creased. I wanted it to be long so I could learn more about her. But I was also afraid of encountering new words. I wasn’t sure if I had the right to be the one announcing things about her life, just because we were in the same language class?
My mouth felt dry. I started reading aloud. My pronunciation wasn’t perfect but felt intentional. I took wrong pauses occasionally. In a language class, the accents masked the emotion, whether you intend or not. No one is that vulnerable beyond the linguistic vulnerability.
「祖母の犬は、今わたしの犬です。でも時々、犬はわたしを見ません。」 My grandmother’s dog is now my dog. But sometimes, the dog doesn’t look at me.
I went on. There weren’t many verb endings I could hide behind. The sentences were plain. Present tense. Everything kept happening. But not much was happening either. I paused before the next line. Trying to decide on the appropriate tone.
「犬は玄関で待ちます。朝と夜。」 The dog waits at the front door. Morning and night.
I imagined the dog sitting by the entrance, ears perked forward. The next paragraph was longer, more complex. Noa’s handwriting got smaller, as if she was running out of space or courage.
「祖母は音楽を聴きます。ジャマイカの音楽です。犬も聴きます。祖母が踊ると、犬も小さく踊ります。」My grandmother listens to music. Jamaican music. The dog listens too. When grandmother dances, the dog dances a little too.
I stumbled over “ジャマイカ” but kept going. I finished reading the essay, thinking of ways to praise her writing that might also comfort her. I thought about the short poems written by her grandma. I wanted to say something that would make the essay about a grandmother who’s fine and alive instead of a dead one. But what do you do when someone confesses bits of their life in made-up essays?
When I looked up, Noa was already looking at me with eyes that had gone soft around the edges. I realized I had been chosen to read her essay. To announce things about her life. It was through my hesitant, slow diction that her words were heard. She had trusted me with it. Our gazes floated around each other like quick, small tides. Around us, Ms. Ishikawa was helping Jay pronounce “blooming” correctly. The Hendersons were debating whether hamsters could be considered family members. The essay lay between us on the desk, a fragile bridge.
Would you like to come over for dinner? I’m cooking. I asked her, despite the weight of the moment. Only in English can I pull off this casualness and put myself in a position that is open yet not vulnerable. We were so delicate just a few minutes ago, now we were just two people from Boston.
My cooking instructor gave us this recipe I wanted to try out. I added. And I’m going to make a properly salted miso this time. Noa grinned, lips curving slowly. We didn’t go to convenience store, and the walk to my home was much longer than 7 minutes. We crossed into Yoyogi Park: cherry blossom petals, long past their peak, faded confetti clinging to the path. Noa stopped by a gnarled tree, its branches twisting toward the sky. “I came for Grandma,” she said. “Thought if I learned Japanese, I’d get closer to her.” I leaned against the tree, the bark rough through my jacket. “Maybe it’s enough to try. Like cooking for me. I’m terrible at it, but when I chop onions or stir miso, I feel engaged.”
In my apartment, the kitchen was a narrow slit of a room. The air held the ghost of burnt sesame oil from a failed tempura earlier that week. I opened a window, letting in the hum of cicadas. I measured water for the dashi, trying to remember Mr. Kenji’s exact proportions. The recipe was in Japanese, and I had to read it slowly, sounding out each character. Noa leaned over, her hair brushing the counter, and helped me translate the handwriting. “That’s ‘simmer,’ not ‘boil’.”
We ate on the floor, bowls balanced on a low table, the miso too salty despite my promise. Between bites, she pulled out a record sleeve from her bag. “She used to play this loud,” Noa said. “Neighbors hated it. The dog would spin in circles.”
I pictured the dog, twirling to a scratchy beat, and thought of the piano I’d left behind in Boston, its keys gathering dust. “I used to play piano,” I said, “Not very well. But I liked how it filled the room.” She put the record sleeve down and picked up her spoon again. “Maybe you’ll play again. Or maybe you’ll just make bad soup forever.” The smile on her face was quick.
I wanted to tell her, that I started dreaming in Japanese for the first time, words glinting like coins in a dark well, one sinking after another. That grief feels like forgetting a word we used to know, and memory is just the clumsy, honest art of translating it back. That maybe we’d both come here for someone else, now we were here for each other, in a kitchen with salty air. But I didn’t, I just passed her the spoon.
The miso cooled in our bowls, the cicadas grew louder, and for a moment, the room felt like a forest—wild, quiet, full of things running free and things left behind. Noa leaned back, her shadow stretching across the floor. I thought of her grandmother’s dog, when people want to talk about grief, they talk about waiting instead. I thought of swans in Boston Common, their white bodies drawing commas and hyphens on the lake. I thought of a fox finding a lost piano.
