21:33 Wednesday 06 June 2018 JST

I worked for JB at three different locations around Kawasaki Station today, as I do every Wednesday, at Solid Square, SSC, and JB main office. Solid Square lesson went pretty well; we drew mind maps of our favorite places and then said a few sentences about them. Then I had a break during which I Marco Poloed with Richard from ae911truth a bit and then worked on AB, nearly finishing this ticket since it received a bit higher priority at our last meeting.

SSC featured lunch with Tomoko and then she reminded me of M’s birthday yesterday and bought a present “from me” which I wrapped. Then lesson with Tomoko and head out to JB (via bus cause it’s kinda raining) and I spent some time working on AB and nearly nearly got the ticket finished.

Four JB lessons each Wednesday: two lessons with kids and then two with adults. New student in the kids lessons is pretty genki, and may have a good effect on the others. We had them write some letters N+1 times and then practiced language “I have a _____” using different plastic fruit. We had tried “I have a _____” and “I want a _____” but they kept getting “have” and “want” mixed up, so I switched it to only “have” because I remember not being able to distinguish the words for library and post office for a long time because I had learned them on the same day.

In second class I used the same fruit to lay out a fake city, hoping they would enjoy giving directions with fruit as landmarks. It did not work as well as I hoped; they prefered playing various sports with the plastic fruits (which I can understand, but was frustrating for a bit). They finally got into it a little bit, but then really got interested with Kazu brought in his computer with an animated game version of giving directions.

In the third class, we used past perfect(?) e.g. “I have worked in _____ for ____” and “I have lived in _____” because the language pattern came up in their banter at the beginning of classes.

In the fourth class, they were not saying much, and I was getting tired, so I invited them to tell me their favorite fairy tale in Japanese. They told me the story of Peach Boy. Their version seemed to be missing a lot of possible sub-plots; I wonder how it was originally written.

21:51 Wednesday 06 June 2018 JST

I have been writing this on the train from Yako to Tsudayama, and am feeling super tired.

If I had my way, I would be magically transported home from here. Thank god for Lin who usually picks me up from our station on Wednesdays.