Identical twins don’t just look alike but should share all the same genes, so it’s hard to say where a small discrepancy might show. I suppose differences in whether they’re good with numbers or not, what school they attend and what sort of friends they make there might emerge over time. And in the way they play the piano, of course.

‘You give it your all with the twins, yet don’t spot that they wear different uniforms? What’s that about?’

It wasn’t that I gave it my all. I just loved the way they played.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing how the twins develop,’ he said finally.

II

Beginner’s Level at Best

Close Your Eyes and Decide

I was about to begin my second year with the company. No new employees had been hired, so as before I remained low down in the pecking order. Still, it was a relief. I had no idea how I’d cope if they hired a younger employee who was more talented than me. The fact was that I believed any new employee would be better than me. It still took a long time for me to get a piano in tune. More worryingly, although I could more or less get it in tune, I couldn’t go beyond that. I struggled desperately with the most critical aspect of tuning – deciding on timbre and tone.

‘Close your eyes and decide,’ Mr Yanagi advised me one day during one of our chats in the shop.

I couldn’t get it. ‘Wait, you’re saying just go for it?’

‘No, that isn’t what I mean. Closing your eyes doesn’t mean you’re getting desperate.

‘For instance,’ he explained kindly, ‘a chef gets quite serious when it comes to tasting a dish. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and makes an immediate decision as to how it should taste. Tuners, too, need to be decisive about the sound or they’ll end up dithering.’

I was writing this all down – Close your eyes – in my notebook. Mr Yanagi added quickly, ‘Some people don’t actually close their eyes. I don’t close mine.’

‘Then who does?’

‘I don’t know. By closing your eyes I just mean that you have to listen carefully and decide on a tone. It’s a kind of metaphor, I suppose.’

Meta, I added in my notebook. Mr Yanagi used so many metaphors when he talked: cheese, wine and so on. If closing your eyes was yet another metaphor, then what was I supposed to take literally?