Entries this day: AM Class Fix-a-flat Voice_training Work

AM

8:11am JST Tuesday 6 May 2003

Last night Janette called around 10pm. I had already gone to sleep, and had earplugs in (to keep me sleeping while Matty and Frank are still awake) so it took me a bit to notice, wake up, answer.

Wow. Good to hear from Janette; I just wanted to cry at times, which I couldn't do for some reason; maybe cause really I was just talking to a voice on the phone and not a real live Janette.

Expressed to her the angst I'm going through in this transition from US to Japanese life - internet connectivity. I've got to wean myself off email and it's killing me - I don't want to "let my friends down" ... which I know is a concern not completely based in truth, but it's still there. I'm afraid to be alone; that's one of my deepest fears - afraid to lose my friends. Afraid that my ex-YRUUers will think I've forgotten about them, when really they still show up in my dreams (Jason called me last night in a dream (or maybe I called him)).

I wondered if this is a natural.. no it's natural for me, so it's natural.. i wonder if this is common, or predictable. I've got to release; oops my brain is in overdrive on tangents now.

* grand irony I've got to release right now when struggle only causes tightening

* I've got fans that I've never met! This is *exactly* what I've wanted, and I'm like shit! How do I keep them??? please don't leave! And I want to send everyone an email "thanks for reading my site; I really appreciate it! you're the best!!" but I can't realistically spend time doing that cause then I won't be living my dream, learning Japanese, traveling around, making my site worth reading in the first place!

((A friend of mine published a web zine called The Texas Gazette (I dunno if it's still around) but at one point she got featured as a site of the month on some high traffic site and *BANG* she got a million emails and she tried to respond to all of the emails instead of focusing on her publication. I'll never forget that story even though parts of me are tempted to tiptoe down that path.))

So.

I read and appreciate every non-spam non-forward email I get. Some of the forwards are good too. Right now my time is shredded by work, walking everywhere my bike won't seem to take me, practicing Japanese

Grrrrrrrrrr why am i making excuses?

I choose not to respond to all the emails I get. I still love you.

Class

12:32pm JST Tuesday 6 May 2003

Class was cool today; it was just Olivia and I there. No Karly-distraction nor Alicia.

One thing though is they use romaji a lot instead of ��������, so I try to ignore it when they write it. I'll ask for �������� next time as well. ������, the younger �������� (%) seems more aware that I use �������� instead of romaji. I appreciate that.

(%) Just at that point the train stopped at a station, and another train pulled up beside us (across the platform from us). A woman saw it, got off our train, onto that train, so I knew it must be an express train. I'm going to ��������, a super big station, so I knew that an express would stop there. I joined her and thereby skipped like 6 stations. Awright.

1:05pm

Right now I'm at ���������[������ Nova, about to attend the voice training. Good stuff I hope.

Fix a flat

1:06pm JST Tuesday 6 May 2003

After class I got .. oh *during* class (during break) I was tapped on the shoulder by ����'s mom and I didn't recognize her at first. She was all "yammeryammer" and I'm all, "um, hi!" knowing that a Japanese wouldn't approach me unless s/he was sure of my identity. I realized it was Koko's mom (have only seen her a couple times in this sea of Japanese faces) and she said something about the bike. I'm all, "oh yeah, it's great!" or some shit, not telling her that it has a flat.

Fortunately, the conversation didn't get to that point, but it did get to the point where she told me that Koko is at home sleeping, not feeling all that hot today.

After class, I stopped by a bike shop and the cat fixed the flat (two punctures in the tube, both by a single small piece of wire that he found still in the tire) pretty quickly. They have different styles of bike maintenence here. Well, at least he did. Using pliers instead of a correctly-sized wrench to get off the nut from the valve stem (and scarring the threads on the valve stem (threads on a valve stem!) and then *cut* off the nut to keep from having to unscrew it all the way), and never actually taking the wheel off the bike. That saved a significant amount of time, I imagine, since he didn't have to reseat the wheel nor fix the train nor any of that.

1470 yen. Fair enough. Just glad to have it fixed.

Voice training

4:16pm JST Tuesday 6 May 2003

Voice Training II was like a whirlwind of information being blown at us all at once. It could have been extended to a two day conference, but apparently Nova believes it wouldn't benefit from such an arrangement. So we go four hours and now I zip off to work four shifts.

I was smart enough to jump on the Limited Express train. This train stops only once between Yokohama and �������[������. That stop does not include my station in ��������. I get to be all sheeeeeewwww right past my station. hahahahah, non limited-express suckas!

- - - - -

A really funny thing about that story is that there's a direct line from Yokohama to Kawasaki. I took the line past my station, switched to a different line, went to Kawasaki.

---- = my path
==== = not my path

Yokohama  ==================== Kawasaki 
            �_              /
             �_            /
              �_          /
               �_        /
                �_      /
                 �_    / 
                  �_  /
                   �_/
                Musashi
                 Kosugi
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Work
11:08pm JST Tuesday 6 May 2003

Just now on the train after work and after chillin' at the kiosk
with Steve (!), Scott and Rich, some of the leader type people at my
school.  I dunno if Rich is a trainer, but Scott is; he was one of our
voice trainers today.  They traded some Nova gossip and drinking
stories, which were spawned after my explanation of why I don't drink:
"I heard all the stories in high school and I'm like 'why do you keep
doing it?'"

"It's pretty hard to explain," said one and went on to describe how
he basically gets drunk every weekend.

I also prefer saving money.

- - - -

Anyway, work itself was pretty good and short; I saw cute �������� in
a different classroom, but I didn't teach her.  After all the classes,
���� came in and told me that one of my students said I was very polite
and a very good teacher.  How awesome to hear!  I've never heard
anyone else get such a compliment; it made me feel quite good.  I'm
glad Steve was there to hear it as well, and he commented positively
on it.

Even though the comments I write in the files are not always
amazing, I always at least mark the files to indicate what lesson
number I have presented to the students.  According to Steve, not
everyone does this.
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