09:16 Wednesday 31 October 2018 JST

The lessons I teach on Wednesday morning used to be on Thursday mornings. They were one of the first lessons I taught for JB. Pretty convenient when Lin and I lived near Kawasaki station, but now it takes over an hour to go each way for an hour lesson.

Once I win the lottery, this will be one of the first lessons I release because I have to leave the house by 5:45 to get a seat on the train on the way there (or leave by 6:15 and stand for 40 minutes total on (two) trains).

Two years ago, Mayumi gave me Hanayama Marble. After playing with it for weeks, I nearly solved it, but in a fit of frustration gave up and looked up the answer online. Upon seeing the solution, I thought “ahhhh crap of course!!!” It is such an elegant solution and I was nearly there.

Four weeks ago, in this class, we started playing a pattern matching word game. For fun, I started with the same word one of the students had started with.

• Haneda Airport
• LA International Airport
• Mt Fuji
• Kobe Airport

I thought they would be able to solve it quickly, but this went on for four weeks until I finally had to pull the plug because one of the students expression was like fuck this. I ended up giving them the answer and the same student was like “ahhhh crap of course!!!”

So in honor of that, today I brought my Hanayama Marble puzzle and left it with one of the students to play with.