Entries this day: Dream First_night Funnest_fastest Work lyle's_party

Dream

11:03am JST Sunday 14 March 2004

I had a birds' eye view of a scene created to be art: a farmer had collected 6 geese, 7 maids, 3 cows, and 2 something else, and though the numbers were off, I guessed it was supposed to represent some of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. Then a fourth cow joined the picture by *falling out of the sky* upside-down onto the backs of the other cows. I was like, "wha?" trying to figure out the symolism of changing 3 to 4, and then a giant yeti walked onto the scene, picked up the cow that had just fallen and ate it.

First night

11:09am JST Sunday 14 March 2004

My first night spent at my new apartment was quite successful. And cold. I wore socks, my jammie jams, an undershirt, my GAP hoodie, the warm gloves that Fred and I bought and traded the day we went to Lake Kawaguchi, and knit cap. I put up two foam walls from my nest (one against the window-wall, cause it's really cold). And I wore earplugs to drown out the debate downstairs. Mmmmmm cozy.

Funnest fastest

12:15pm JST Sunday 14 March 2004

I found the funnest fastest way to get to 武蔵小杉 from my house (on bike). It may not be the *fastest* because it goes at right angles and not angle angles, but it's pretty fuckin' direct. It's funnest because I get to zoom along the tracks (around which construction is going on) and then shoop under the tracks twice in a dogleg fashion. [shoop! shoop!]

Work

9:21pm JST Sunday 14 March 2004

Awesome. Work was pretty much super fast today; no worries (except one (*)) and it just flew-ish by. I had nine lessons today between 1pm and 8:25pm

(*) the one lesson that kinda fucked me up was a level up test. I forgot how to administer the test, so I winged it. I talked to Eric afterward and he showed me how. I had forgotten in the month since I had training. Oops. No worries though; I was upfront about fucking up and he didn't make a big deal about it. Awesome.

Now I'm on a train to Yokohama to meet Lyle (!) (I thought he had left town) et. al. He said I should bring info like an old CD or book that I don't want anymore. I brought a semi-backup CD of mp3s from my computer and a book called Ishmael, about a gorilla that talks about how we can recover our souls in the wack society.

I never finished the book; I couldn't get past the premise of a gorilla talking.

I asked Lyle, "is bringing the book or CD critical or just whatever?"

"Um, it's critical."

Fair enough.

lyle's party

12:46am JST Monday 15 March 2004

At Lyle's party, we had a gift exchange thing with all the information that people brought. Ali, Erik and I spent several minutes discussing how to set up the game, but Lyle claimed he (and by "proxy" everyone else) was too drunk to understand the rules of the gift exchange game. (Take a gift from the center or take a gift from someone who already has a gift.) After the resulting free-for-all with everyone just grabbing things out of the box, Carla was like, "when are we going to play the game?" and I was like, "that was it; it was supposed to be more structred [blah blah blah]" and I explained the rules and all that.

"Oh. wakatta. I thought that was a little strange."

Lyle asked people for challenges, ("anything. any challenge") and Ali set up this challenge between me and Lyle for doing pull ups. I was like, "I can do five, but not ten" but the contest still required the winner to do ten first and the loser has to kiss Junko on the lips. I lost, and Junko was like, "waaaa!" and wasn't having it. I didn't try very hard.

Ali was like, "no! you gotta do it!" and "doesn't matter" when I was like, "naw man; she obviously isn't interested." so Lyle solved it by giving me a faux open mouth kiss. Ali goes, "done," in his way that means "the problem has been resolved."

Oh my gosh the funniest part of the night was when we went to Lyle's and walked inside and it smelled like cat shit and Benny and Tomoko were like, "where is everybody?" and then a big dog started trying to push its way out of its closed-with-a-shoestring door to eat us and then they were like, "oh shit this is the wrong room!" I shoulda snapped a photo, but I was like shoop and headed downstairs. I thought it was a bit weird that the boys had said, "it's on the second floor" and then went to the third floor. Also interesting that the people seemed not to be home upstairs, yet the door was unlocked. Just like Canada, eh?

Lyle and I drove around in his upside down box labeled "Lyle's Love Box" for a bit, but didn't get very far before he ejected himself from the car.

Rumi, somehow, looked cuter than ever.

At the end of the evening, Fritz showed me how to access train information on my phone. Awesome. I told him I'd give him a hundred yen if he showed me, but I didn't make good on my offer because he didn't seem to care/want it.

Walked back to the station with Beth (an AT at a different Nova school) and Tomoko (who wasn't wearing a coat) and we got our respective last trains back home. Dropped off Beth at Yokohama and I enjoyed talking with Tomoko who said she would give to level 3 Miho a letter if I give it to Tomoko. I didn't get a chance to thank Miho for giving me a new job charm from her father's shrine, and for giving me the bilingual history of Japan book, so I'd like to do that.

Tomoko asks good questions. At least as many as KG Miki. I can learn a lot from them.