"Try it again."

"I've tried enough already. I can't do it."

"Robert." Saito took his arm, drawing him a little closer as the signal changed, and the mass of people around them surged forward into the crosswalk. "What would happen if we were separated? How would you find your way back to the office?"

Robert sighed, rolling his eyes. "'The taxi stop is where," he said, in faltering Japanese.

"What was that? I can hardly hear you."

"'Where is the taxi stop?'"

"Why should anyone tell you after you've asked so rudely?" Saito strode ahead, into a clearer stretch of sidewalk. "Next time, say 'Excuse me. Would you tell me if there is a taxi stop nearby, please?'"

Robert paused, attempting to mouth the words to himself, and shook his head. "I think I'll plan on not getting lost, instead."

"I suppose that would be acceptable too," Saito sighed. Now that they had mostly outpaced the crowd, he slowed a little, letting go of Robert's hand. They walked past window displays where mobile phones twirled on lucite platforms, their screens mirror-bright, and mannequins posed for admirers they couldn't see. The night air was sharp, and it seemed to make the flashing signs and twinkling lights of the shops glow brighter.

"Here," said Saito, as they passed a clothing store. "What would you say if you wanted to buy that coat?"

"I'd say, Mr. Saito, please tell the clerk I want to buy that coat."

He smirked, ever so slightly. "Try asking if anyone on the staff speaks English."

Robert sighed, attempting to visualize the page in his phrasebook. "'Excuse me, does anyone on your staff speak English?'"

Saito looked at him, puzzled. "Speak perpetuity? Oh - you meant eigo. Not eigou."

"There's a difference?"

They stopped on top of a hill, overlooking a park where a few patches of frozen snow still clung to the ground. Away from the color and the noise of the street, it seemed considerably colder.

"Did you want to go back?" asked Saito.

"No," Robert said flatly. "We've been inside for the past - three days?"

"Two and a half. Losing your perspective will only make you feel worse." He took out his wallet. "I'll buy something to warm us up." Saito walked to one of the vending machines, and returned with two cans. "Can you read this label?"

"It's coffee."

"Very good," he said, legitimately impressed.

"There's a picture on it," said Robert, cracking the can open. He took a sip and looked back at Saito. "Sorry."

"No, that was quite resourceful of you," he admitted.

"Three weeks of total immersion," Robert sighed, "and I've gotten much better at finding ways of avoiding reading."

"It will come to you. I was six years old when I learned to speak English," said Saito, his expression softening a little at the memory. "I remember sitting in a movie theater in New York. I was there alone, sneaking in without a ticket, just to get away from the heat. Everyone around me laughed, and all of a sudden, I understood what was funny."

"What was it?"

"I don't remember." Saito smiled, reaching for his hand again. "The specifics get lost, but the sentiment remains."

At Proclus Global business functions, Robert spoke like an pull-string doll: "'It is good,'" he'd say, handing whatever documents had just been handed to him back to Saito. If everyone else was laughing, he could laugh too, and say, "'It is interesting.'" Once all that was through, he was more or less out of things to say, and he was reduced to motioning around the conference room and saying, "'It is nice.'" Saito's associates would agree and smile indulgently, and then go back to their real conversations - most likely, he could only assume, about who this foreign imbecile could be, and why he was sitting next to the chairman.

Still, Robert was protective of "good," "nice," and "interesting." They may have been the only words he had, but he could pronounce them correctly and use them at appropriate conversational turns. "It's a working strategy, for now," he told Saito, as they sat in his office one morning. "If I don't say anything, that still means I haven't said it wrong."

"You don't need to be ashamed. They know you are still learning." Saito idly turned the page on his desk calendar. "No one ever learned anything without making a few mistakes."

There was a soft rap on the door. An associate of Saito's stood peering around the edge, folio in hand, asking what Robert figured was if he had interrupted anything. Saito rose from his chair and motioned him in. Robert glanced about, looking for any distraction that might prevent him from having to talk to the man, and picked up a book that had been lying on the desk.

The man spread the contents of the folio over the desk, and he and Saito began speaking in rapid-fire Japanese. Robert pretended to be too engrossed in the book to have noticed him right away, concentrating on maintaining an aura of cool, professional competency. He counted five seconds and then looked up. "'G-Good morning,'" he said in Japanese.

"'Ah! Good morning,'" the man responded. "You speak very well."

Robert smiled in acknowledgement. Relieved, and a little smug, he turned back to the window, allowing them to finish their conversation. When he had left, Robert immediately turned back to Saito.

"He said I speak well," he said, attempting to look as if he wasn't extremely proud of the fact. "Do you think he thought I could understand what you were talking about?"

Saito said nothing, but gently squeezed Robert's shoulder and took the book from him. He turned it around so it faced right-side up, and placed it back in his hands.

After two more months of self-study, Robert decided that his problem was going to need professional attention. With Saito's help in navigating the Showa University website, he became one of a small collection of expatriates who spent every Tuesday and Thursday night learning to make small talk with one Professor Momiji Morimura. Many of them were the wives of various executives and diplomats, most of them possessed advanced degrees, and all of them had a familiar lonesome, stir-crazy look about them that Robert hoped they didn't see in him as well. Robert was one of two men in the class; the other being Torres-san, a Dominican restaurateur who had come to Tokyo to open a nightclub that would be "'the most sexy, most money, most best in anywhere.'" Torres-san was Robert's conversation partner, if one could suspend disbelief enough to accept their awkwardly-staged textbook readings as conversations.

"'Do you enjoy the skiing?'"

"'The skiing is... not good,'" said Robert, scanning the doodles of vacation activities. "'I more like the hiking.'"

Torres-san nodded. "'I, too, like the hiking. The hiking is done sometimes in Canada.'"

"Yes. That is good. One may also do the hiking on Italy, where mountains is.'"

They exchanged tight-lipped smiles, followed by a long, uncomfortable silence of the kind Robert had become very accustomed to.

Class finished with an exam. Professor Morimura returned them on Thursday, walking past everyone's desk and laying them there discreetly, face-down. Robert turned his over to see he had scored fifteen out of forty.

"'Fischer-san,'" said Professor Morimura, dropping to her knees in front of his desk to look at him at eye-level. "I think that maybe you had a problem with the test."

"A problem?" He stared at her. "I failed it."

"The test was very challenging. I did not expect any student to do perfectly." She tilted her head towards him, her eyebrows raised and her mouth pulled into a smile. It was a look of sincere, tender pity. "'But you are exceptionally stupid. You should just give up and go home.'"

Common sense dictated that she probably didn't actually say that. But, Robert realized, with a growing level of discomfort, he wouldn't have known if she did.

Walking home, even the signs Robert passed seemed to be taunting him. WHAT DOES IT MATTER?, every blinking letter, every smiling advertisement might as well have said. YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE READ THIS. Robert realized there was, in fact, nothing stopping the entire nation of Japan from telling him what he didn't want to hear at every turn he made. He knew it was preposterous, but once the idea was in his head, he couldn't help but wonder.

"'Good morning,'" he said to the receptionist.

"'You are a farce of a man,'" she might have said, and buzzed him in.

"'One ticket, please,'" he said to the railway agent.

"'You have accomplished nothing worthwhile in your life,'" he might have said, handing over his change.

"'Just water would be fine,'" he told the waitress.

The waitress nodded, making a note of it on her pad. "'He will lose interest in you shortly.'"

"Are you all right?" Saito asked, as soon as she had left. "You seem... preoccupied."

"Fine," he said. "Just thinking about class. It was longer than usual today."

"And how are your studies going?"

"They're... going." Robert sighed. "I wrote my first essay."

"Ah, the Genkoyoushi. It is the bane of many young Japanese students."

"Yes," he said, rolling his eyes. "I can add it to my list of achievements: undergraduate degree from Columbia. MBA from Harvard. Misspelled, handwritten paragraph about things I like from the Showa University's basement Learning Annex."

"May I see it?"

Wordlessly, Robert pulled out his folder of study materials and passed it across the table. Saito laughed to himself and began reading. "Your name is Robert Fischer. You are thirty-three years old. You are from Australia."

"Oh, no - You don't have to read it out loud - "

"You live in Shinagawa-ku, in an apartment building that is clean and quiet. It is near the railway station, so the street is sometimes busy. Your favorite color is blue."

"I know it's inane," said Robert. "I don't know how long I have to wait before I know enough to say something relevant."

Saito shrugged. "Progress is progress. But you've omitted something quite important. Here." Saito took one of the blank notecards that littered the folder, and wrote something on it. Wordlessly, he pushed it across the table.

It was a sentence almost completely kanji. "I can't read that."

"Here," he said, rewriting it in kana. "Read it out loud."

"...Boku wa Saito Ishio no koibito." Robert squinted at the words. "Does that mean I'm your associate?"

"No."

"Your employee?"

"It does not." Saito looked down, smiling. "Use your dictionary. Do not ask your teacher what it means."

"If you say so," Robert said, dictionary out and already turning the pages. Underneath his fingers, the characters resolved themselves again. Don't close this book, they said. You have so much ahead of you. Speak, and be willing to listen; you will understand soon enough.