On the morning of his son's wedding, Frank Gibbs, the neighborly physician in Thorton Wilder's "Our Town," confesses to his wife that his chief concern in the early days of their own marriage was how to make small talk with his bride.
"I was afraid," he tells her, "we wouldn't have material for conversation more'n'd last us a few weeks."
Spin the world and switch sleepy Grover's Corners for wide-awake Tokyo, and I admit I had a similar anxiety when my wife and I married in 1979. In our case, however, my apprehension was partly powered by my dubious skills in Japanese. I envisioned sizzling breakfast talk not unlike the beginner dialogues in my language class: