Entries this day: __55Cancri japanese

55Cancri

17 June 2002

55 Cancri is a star with a planet similar to Jupiter. This star system is 41 light years away, and according to the article, would take 1 million years for one of our spacecraft to get there (at current technology/velocity).

I'm recording this to make note of the state of astronical technology (at least as reported by US media).

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japanese

6:44 pm Monday 17 June 2002

I am at JASH (Japanese American Society of Houston) in the classroom where there was scheduled to be a class starting at 6:30pm. But so far no other students have arrived.

I got to meet John Elsner, who I met over the phone via Larry, the owner of 1/4 Price Books. John is the Director of JASH.

The instructor just saw my keyboard and said sugoi, fantastic.

7:50 am Tuesday 18 June 2002

Two other students arrived last night. Jessie and I forgot the other's name. They were in Level II japanese, but they were reading romanji instead of hiragana. Even so, I felt really slow and ill prepared to be in the class.

I really am below that level of vocabulary they were reading. Stuff like, "Is there a post office nearby?" "yes there is." "where is it?" "the post office is near the supermarket." but the instructor and students were quite impressed that I knew hiragana. I could basically pronounce all of it aloud, but I had no idea what I was saying.

When they read it quickly, I could basically keep up with reading the hiragana silently along with them.

The instructor will call me tonight (I've forgotten her name as well) to let me know what first level class I can attend.