Entries this day: OM Taihen ikumi

OM

11:01am JST Monday 1 November 2004

Went to OM today to try to fix the internet connection while he has rocked off to Phillipines. 9am arrived and called NTT (phone company) and they spoke good English: "your phone line is cool; it must be your ISP. Call them."

I called them, and prided myself in being able to nearly understand (especially given the context) the recorded Japanese yammering that included [10am] to determine the message was saying, [we open at 10am; call back then.]

So Jen and I chowed breakfast at Yoshinoya, (which included her telling me about her mom nearly scalping herself in a car accident, not knowing her scalp was flapping back, posing for pictures, and then going to the hospital where the nurse said, "I'll take care of things," meaning "I'll call yer mom," but which Jen's mom took to mean "I'll call yer lawyer and hook you up with a big lawsuit settlement," so when the lawyer came, Jen's mom was all, "oh, it's already been taken care of; don't worry your pretty little non-scalped head about it," and as a result, never got a settlement, (and included me telling Jen how I learned to dance, which amounted a lot to how I didn't learn to dance, and how I learned to hate line dancing and therefore any concept of dancing where specific foot placement is involved, plus how my friend Christina taught me how to dance in a way that was non-threatening to my shy character (of that time) by standing, not moving my feet, and just imagining I was seaweed, waving gently about in the water, a dance move I demonstrated for Jen in the restaurant,)) and I called them back at 10am. No English speakers were there, but I was able to finally understand they were giving me a new number to call.

((One thing I realized after a while was they were using a superformal form of Japanese, which is part of why I couldn't tell wtf they were saying. The grammar seems to use much longer forms, and more question forms, or maybe I'm just full of hooey. Also, because the woman was being so polite, she would ask me a question that amounted to, "can I give you a number to call?" but would not give me the number until I said "yes" and then when she asked, "will you call them?" she would not hang up until I said yes. but I kept saying, I don't understand. She never lost her patience, and I kept not knowing what she was saying. Anyway, it was a relief for me to finally figure it out that the number she had just given me was essentially the End Of Transmission; it was time to hang up and call them.))

So I called the new number, and though the guy was genkier, allowing me to pick up on meaning via cues of intonation, he spoke no more English than she did, which was none. However, his increased genkiness meant he was talking more quickly, making it trickier overall to understand.

I wasn't able to understand much of what he was saying beyond "YOOZA NAMU" (username), which I gave him. I tried in a few different ways to tell him, [I don't care what you do, but if you can get the internet to work, then go for it.]

He kept being all [yah it's a messed up situation that requires a Japanese speaker, eh?] and I'm like, [we ain't gots no Japanese speakers up in dis joint,] an he be all like [da hey you talkin' bout dawg? hook up one a dem dam Japanese speakin' mofos on dis line and stop talkin' yer damn efft up Japanese an shit.]

So I made some guesses at what information he might possibly want that could get past this hurdle. I was like, [I gots my username, password, physical address, birthdate..] and he was like, [is that right? well I don't give I flying flip about that stuff.] So I was like, [is the money okay?]

And I knew I triggered something with him cause his answer was differently unintelligible from what he said before. So I simplified it, to literally "money is okay? money is not okay?"

He chose "not okay."

Okay! Now we were getting somewhere. But, I have no financial information so I can do no more good nor harm here.

Jen called Yoshi, but got no answer, so we left, but then decided to call him again, so we came back, called him, faxed him the details of what had happened so far, and then we left for real. Best faith effort fully attempted.

Taihen

9:11pm JST Monday 1 November 2004

Work has been fine, but I'd theoretically like to study, but I don't want to actually study. Sigh. I don't know what I want to do, but I know I'd like to cover these emotions by hanging out with a cute woman.

ikumi

12:30am JST Tuesday 2 November 2004

I got a good idea on the way home today: walk around the block with Ikumi while I learn vocabulary, and she learns her neighborhood. She believes she is super bad at directions, so we walked around the block, she taught me everything in Japanese, and therefore she had to look at things carefully. We both benefitted and both want to do it again sometime.