Entries this day: Today What's_the_dealio Work

Today

12:30pm JST Thursday 24 July 2003

Took a nice nap after teaching Aki at Subway. She's getting better, I'm quite certain. Today she blurted out quite a long sentence with no errors.

En route to KQ now. Back to work work work.

Um.. Oh, Shin cancelled our lesson yesterday, but that's cool cause I had already eaten instead of waiting for him to buy dinner. Doubly cool is that he called me after his meeting let out and said he'd take me to the local government office thing (he said Yokohama City Hall, which it may very well be) to help me find guest housing! That means I will be more fully engaged in Japanese culture, meeting some new peeps and chatting up in Japanese far more often than seems possible with Frank and Matty.

What's the dealio

12:36pm JST Thursday 24 July 2003

Okay.

After a month or so of depression, whining and sulking in my room and giving my time to the internet instead of studying, doing what seemed like nothing except wondering why in the world I am here instead of with my friends, I feel better.

I've recognized that I let myself get stuck in the rut of Nova - work work work and feeling stuck stuck stuck with no upward mobility except becoming more proficient at the dumb Nova way of teaching, caring nothing (or not much) about my students, blah blah blah.

It's *possible* for me to engage this culture without giving up my soul to the whims of meeting people in drinking/smoking/gross social situations (bars ("izakias")). It's possible to change my housing situation to one that suits my desires (Japanese chatter instead of English chatter). It's possible to find a source(s) of income(s) that lets me care for my students.

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The revelation came as I glanced through some classifieds online. They're just like classifieds in the US. Please come give us your money; we have the best deal in town, blah blah blah.. it's just all in Japanese.

To start, as previously encouraged by my personal coach, I just began to put my desire out there. "I would like to live with Japanese roommates instead of American roommates. Do you know of anyone who's looking for an American roommate?" etc, to several people that I know in my Japanese life.

Some people poohpoohed my technique. "What are the chances of someone that you know knowing someone who needs a roommate?" I dunno. But asking is better than pouting.

Just last night, Shin called me and said he'd take me on Wednesday to register for guest housing.

(I'm making up the word register; I have no idea what the process actually requires. But we're going to Yokohama City Hall, or some other government type place to begin the process of securing guest house living for me. Awesome.)

I have simply stated my desire: I intend to live in a non-smoking environment, with sane native Japanese speakers (preferably male to keep me focused) who are friendly and genuinely interested in helping me learn Japanese conversation. Internet access is a plus, and a nearby train station is a plus.

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I have released as trivial the challenges of having recently set up Yahoo! BB at my apartment, and having a place for janette to stay when she visits.

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On the language front, I have recently determined that rote memorization will be required to learn Japanese. That's a no brainer, but I had been like, "I already memorized so much!" where 'so much' is probably 50 or 100 words. I just gotta memorize more more more more.

So I'm carrying my flashcards with me again.

Work

9:15pm JST Thursday 24 July 2003

Today at work during my last lesson I had a pleasant attractive single female man to man. Told her I had a girlfriend so she shouldn't try anything sneaky. But she did ask me what I like and I tried to tell her but couldn't help but laugh a bit because I had this little sketch by Brak in my head, where the climax goes, "Hello, My name is Bongo, I like to climb on things, can I have a banana? Eeek eeek."

I carefully explained it to her and she thought it was funny.

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The man to man prior to that was with a super shy super quiet super low 7C 12 year old girl. I finally got her to name colors on some animal flash cards I had brought as backup in case the warnings in her file proved true.

Cracked out a little Japanese to break through to her.

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The four man lesson with all men was pretty good; I had them querying each other about this woman's photo album in level 7A. Several variants like, "what could she do when she was 12?" and "when could she ride a horse?" and then a level 6 structure: "what was she doing when this picture was taken?"

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Didn't have any of my girlfriends today.