Entries this day: Bicycle_accident_janette Dream Grammar Helping class clean morag nap room_cleaning zzz

Bicycle accident janette

6:32am JST Friday 2 January 2004

This morning at 6 janette woke me up after having had a bicycle accident. She cut her thumb open and slightly bonked her head. She was crying when she told me and I tried not to visualize the scene.

The good thing is she got to ride home with blood dripping, which is pretty cool.

She'll wear a helmet now when she rides. I probably still won't. Why?

She was like, "I'm going to go do it again because I'm scared," referring to doing the same manuever that she just did (which she's done many times in the past, but today it was wet) and I was like, eeeeee, "I invite you not to do it again. Do you know why?"

"Cause it's still slick?"

"Cause it's still wet, exactly."

I just had a realllly bad feeling about her doing it again.

She wanted to do something; go running maybe. She decided to do yoga.

Ah. That sounds much nicer.

I tried to go back to sleep, but woke up three times thinking about writing this.

Dream

6:38am JST Friday 2 January 2004

I dreamt that Jackie Purdy sent me an email saying basically that she missed talking to me and looked forward to having the ability to walkie talkie me at any time. (*)

She wrote in an email, "I look forward to chatting with you in realtime. Maybe we can play something like Doom online." or something that referred to an existing (game) technology that I don't use (yet?).

(*) I read David Pogue's article about walkie talkie phones last night.

Grammar

8:28am JST Friday 2 January 2004

あやな called me this morning and asked if we can move our lesson back to 10 o'clock instead of 9:30. Almost as good as cancelling altogether, which I partially hoped when I saw her name on the caller ID.

I requested that we don't learn new grammar today, but that we go back over the て form of conjugations and start over from that point. That's where I started to really get lost, in my estimation.

This is a benefit of having private lessons. My own syllabus.

Helping

9:49am JST Friday 2 January 2004

When I arrived in Shibuya, a backpacker fully lost was down by the trains and tried to get the help of a Japanese cat who walked by, but I was right there and approaching him (the backpacker), "hi."

I couldn't place his accent; his English seemed quite good, but not quite native.

He wanted simply to go to Yokohama and had four equally confusing gates to choose from. I told him all four go to Yokohama; it just depends on how fast he wanted to go. In his case fastest is bestest so I pointed him to track 2 which I could see from the kanji was the next limited express train to Yokohama. Four stops and bang Yokohama.

"How long have you been here?"

"Eight and a half months. Wait, nine months." Wait, nine and a half months.

"Maybe I should ask you this; I'm looking for a place to stay and these places that I looked up are closed for the holidays.."

And I explained that I never had to go through that housing search deal and therefore couldn't help him. But I didn't remember in time that Dan and I have an empty room in our apartment. I quit harassing myself about it and called Dan.

He was sleeping. "mate?"

"Mate! Do you need some purpose in your life?"

"What is it?"

"You can meet a guy who's going to Yokohama right now and offer him a place to stay in our empty room."

"I'll think about it."

I'm pretty sure that means he'll go back to sleep, but hey.

class

5:53pm JST Friday 2 January 2004

Class was fun. No new grammar. Went back over て forms and made a bunch of flash cards. Told her about my adventures into the new year.

clean

5:54pm JST Friday 2 January 2004

Dan and I rearranged our house today and Morag said it looks really cute, which probably means it does since she has never been here before and therefore didn't know it looked any other way.

I cleaned my room a bit (!!!) and then worked on posting pictures on my site.

morag

5:59pm JST Friday 2 January 2004

Morag and I hung out by the river and gossipped and chilled in the lovely weather. A little kid came up behind us twice and when we acknowledged him, he ran away both times.

We've just studied at my apartment for about 2 hours. Good stuff.

As she was leaving, I'm like, "aight, say something funny."

"I'm not good at saying funny stuff." I got about 1/2 way through quoting her when she said, "and you're not allowed to write that."

Hugged her and kept hugging her, "I'm going to hug you for a little longer," and she broke the hug with a laugh like I was being silly, but really I was just settling into it. I have hugged men in my I-group for longer than I hugged her.

Sigh. I like Morag.

- - - -

Oh, it was nice to get "you're hardcore dude" comment from her when I told her what I wrote in my journal, including stuff that could compromise my job.

nap

6:09pm JST Friday 2 January 2004

I'm sooo tired. I'm going to take a nap.

11:23pm JST Friday 2 January 2004

I was looking for a place to live, oh I was nearing my one year annivesary in Japan and I had been playing ultimate here for a year with the guys and somehow I was also new to their group here and their slightly new game, but I was still part of the group and we were putting things away after the game and I was watching to see how it was done; every thing has a specific protocol in Japan. I felt happy to be rejoined with the ultimate group.

- - - -

I was riding my bicycle on some variety of concrete walking areas in the middle of a supermarket type place, SAMs esque in Japan. Japanese were crowded patiently in line and made good obstacles to not hit while I was riding slowly through this building with slopes and dips as they were all waiting in line before 10am to enter the store's opening (not grand open (as they call it here)) but just a daily opening. Popular place.

I was then wearing skates and needed to go down an escalator with cardboard boxes on it making it really slick and I'm like "cool" and went down the escalator partially backwards, and partially stopped sideways to not hit people and then backwards again and then stop to not wipe out on the cardboard, but then at the bottom I picked up some good speed and turned left around the escalator's corner as it went outside into the bright sunlight of morning.

There was more space outside and I skated near a skate park kinda thing with a shallow graffittied pool on my right and I engaged a corner of the pool, and then I decided to get some more speed and had to get out of the way of a bicyclist about to hit me, wait he was on skates toa and I turned and he turned and we didn't hit as we were on parallel antitangential turns slowly going away from each other and then I was like ready to engage the pool and I got some speed and was conscious that I was not wearing a helmet so I would have to be careful (and get my helmet next time so I could do some fucked up stuff) and I went down this pool and up a not so steep part and jumped into the air a little bit and landed safely away from the pool. Nice.

room cleaning

2:08am JST Saturday 3 January 2004

Dan cleaned his room today. He didn't have far to go to make it clean. Good deal. Via peer pressure I was inspired to clean my room.

I've gotten as far as throwing out the trash into the kitchen trashcan, putting up one picture, putting two pictures into their holder, and washing the mildewed cover of my old futon mat.

When it came time to do anything else, I'm like... bluh.

I note that I'm looking for the correct place to put things. On my website I have designed a structure that has worked pretty well for storing a lot of thoughts written in English. I've even gotten to where I can write things in Japanese, でも I don't have such a structure for all the stuff in my room.

I do see a couple more things I can do though. I can put my (unbroken) umbrella outside and put all my laundry in a pile. And I know where my scrapbook is; I've got things to put in there.

I'm planning to release the need to put things in my scrapbook in perfect chronological order; just get them in there is enough. They will be in a rough order within 6 months I imagine.

一 ニ 三 go

2:41am

Okay. I've put the umbrella outside, started a load of laundry, put two things in my scrapbook and pored over a map of Shibuya, getting things situated in my brain.

Oh, and I smurfed an article on hip hop culture to send to DL at KTRU, assuming he's still there.

3:16am

I'm distracted beyond working on my room more. But I hung the first load of laundry up and put another load in. Second load includes my keys so I will remember to get it out and put it up in the AM when I go..... skate with Carla!!!!

zzz

3:29am JST Saturday 3 January 2004

Today is the day Dan and I put up some maps, cut the advertising part out of the JR line map of Tokyo and reattached the trim to the map part of the poster, put up a blank sheet of butcher paper (that had been used to protect my canvas) on the wall where a poster of some basketball cat had been (Kenyon Martin I think (whose name I only remember cause it said "Grand Kenyon" on the poster)) after Dan had said "we must find a replacement poster before the end of the holidays," and the day I began to clean my room before janette comes to visit in less than two weeeeeks!

3:37am

Two goals for tomorrow:

1) go skating with Carla

1.5) write about it

2) write a State of My Life Address

Sleep now.