Entries this day: Chinese FDA_sucks Gmail_rules Haxor Work mutsumi my_bicycle_guardian

Chinese

2:27pm JST Tuesday 28 September 2004

Chinese lesson was good; we sat on one of the benches at a computer kiosk type thing "History of Kawasaki" in Japanese and English. The English versions, while grammatically accurate, are far shorter than the Japanese versions.

I think I may have learned something; at one point the tones began to actually feel reachable. That was strange. Well, they felt natural, almost.

I'm really just working on pronunciation of four tones for each of pa, po, pi, pu, ba, bo, bi, bu, be, ma, mo, mi, me, mu, fa, fo, fi, fu etc. She gave me a little bit of vocabulary. I'll work on the kanji now.

Riho has long two-tone hair; it appears that she's choosing to no longer dye her black hair blondish-brown. She speaks Japanese well, and works hard to learn English. So far she has read the first 20 pages of her son's reading book:

Good Morning!
Wake up.
Yes, Mommy.
Brush your teeth.
Yes Mom.
Wake your brother.
Okay.

I'm hungry.
What's for breakfast?
Can I eat?
Don't forget your tomatoes.
I'm full.

...
...

This is a book.
This isn't an eraser.

...
...

Is there a book?
Are there some pencils?

She teaches me Mandarin, and from what I can tell, her accent includes the "ar" sound that Kat said sounds ugly. (Having Kat's approval is important in my mind, but she (Kat) never answered my request to teach me Chinese, so oh well.)

Sometimes Riho spews instructional Chinese, or explanatory Chinese, and it's just complete jibberish to me. But it sounds like it could possibly be fun to understand.

She has a son who is about 8 years old.

FDA sucks

4:15pm JST Tuesday 28 September 2004

The FDA has new rules that say I can't send ramen noodles into the US from Japan without filling out some prior notice to import food thing.

That's what I found out when I tried to send janette's present to her. Fortunately, the guys at my local post office told me, instead of me having to find out later that they didn't go through.

I'm trying to look up how to get the prior notice forms filled out, but the internet connection here is on break right now.

4:40pm

I rebooted the router and we're cool again. Created my logon to the FDAs site. They require cool passwords, and they give me my username. They don't disallow robots to create the logon information, though.

4:47pm

Holy cats.

They won't let me use Safari; it's an unsupported browser.

They require me to know into what port on what day and at what time the noodles will arrive. They want me to enter the mode of transportation. I just want to use the magic of the postal service and send some noodles.

They want me to enter the importer's address. Is that janette's address? Is she importing food or receiving a gift in the mail?

US FDA, bite my hairy ass, you punks.

For fun, I went to fdaregistrar.com that makes it "easy" again to send food to the US. One of their forms looks like this:

Sorry, janette; I can't easily send you noodles.

Gmail rules

9:09am JST Tuesday 28 September 2004

I just sent this to Fred.

g

I have *got* to study, but I just noticed this:

I have some messages starred in gmail.
I click on the link to view starred messages.
I click some of the stars to turn the stars off.
I click on a message to view it.
I click on "go back to starred messages."

The messages without stars are still there.
The messages without stars are still there, but they have their stars turned off.

I click on Inbox and *then* back to starred messages and the
non-starred messages are gone.

gmail is awesome!  It knows when we're fuckin' around with the stars,
keep em all visible until we move off to something else.  Genius!

G

Haxor

8:32am JST Tuesday 28 September 2004

Interesting:

johnny.ihackstuff.com

Work

11:41am JST Wednesday 29 September 2004

Also yesterday at work, I had Makiko, who is equally beautiful, well, she's really pretty and beautifully made up. I should get a picture of us on here. I have a little picture, but not a big one that will begin to show what I mean.

Anyway, she's beautiful (and married (sigh)) and she likes my lessons enough that she chose my lesson specifically so she could review for the test that she'll take on Friday. She wants to have her picture taken with me when she passes the book on Friday. So she's chosen my lesson again for this Friday. Nice. Really a stroke for my teaching ability.

Today at work I have two lessons and one student: Hiromi, who always chooses my lessons. We speak in half Japanese and half English; now that I've stopped trying to teach her, the lessons are quite enjoyable. When I was all worked up about actually having her make some progress, it was a nightmare.

After the two lessons with her, I'll meet Mutsumi at 9:15 at Denny's.

mutsumi

9:48pm JST Tuesday 28 September 2004

Well, pooh.

Mutsumi seems to not be here at Denny's. I wonder if she's okay. I will stay until 10pm and then roll out.

11:35pm

Ah. She was still at Gaba. We had fun chatting about travel and roller coasters and I showed her pictures from Hawaii (Feb 2003) and my western state trip (Nov-Dec 2003)

We played the World of Where game for Asia and got 56% correct, although we lost a few percent due to her not being used to my computer's touchpad.

She said that she can't really afford to buy new points at Gaba when hers expire in November. And she said that she hasn't used the book in 2 months and someone at Yokohama office said she had to use the book. I was shocked, but if that person was just trying to make sales, it makes sense in a way. I told her it was ridiculous; she was paying for 1-on-1 lessons; she can do anything she pleases in the lesson.

- - - -

Mutsumi speaks quietly and deliberately. She has her own slow pace of speaking, and she maintains that speed, so it's not too strange to listen. She wants to study in New York, but isn't sure she'll be able to afford it.

She's been to Canada two times, including Vancouver, Ottowa and Niagra Falls.

She asked about the name of the roller coaster in Las Vegas; The Stratosphere.

my bicycle guardian

12:11am JST Wednesday 29 September 2004

About a week ago, on the last night Andrew worked at Gaba before his month long vacation, I showed him my new bike. We went outside and there was a man sitting at the picnic table next to the light to which my bike was locked. He spoke relatively good English and said he admired my bike. I told him about my planned trip and where I live and stuff. He said that he's lived in Jiyugaoka for many (50?) years, and that this was his street.

I thanked him for looking after my bike.

Tonight, he was there again, and I was glad to see him when I came to get my bike. I asked his name. "Kobayashi."

We chatted a bit in English and Japanese and when some of his friends got off work (in the beauty salon that faces his picnic table) they came out to smoke and chat. He told them of my upcoming adventure and they ooh and ahhed and I was like, [I don't know if I can do it, but] in my best Japanese. They were surprised when I said I ride from Motosumiyoshi to Jiyugaoka in 30 minutes. [This is practice; Hokkaido is super far away.]

They agreed.

Kobayashi has lived in Jiyugaoka for a long time. I can imagine he chills by that table every night as a relaxation. He looks old and wise, and is missing several teeth. His body is slim in a healthy way. He sits on the bench facing away from the table, with his elbows back on the table for support.