Entries this day: AM No_cellphone Work

AM

1:51pm JST Tuesday 26 September 2006 (day 13334)

This morning I kept sleeping until fully 10+ am, with a dream featuring Kris from Canada at a tiki style buffet, asking me what was available. Discounting that she's a vegetarian, I tried hard to memorize the offerings to give her a full report.

Soon after I woke up, Kris came online and we chatted for an hour + 20 minutes on Skype. Good times. She and her business partner are going camping Wednesday to experience travel, clear air and clear minds (except for the "get loaded" part) and think of a name for their travel agency.

We gossipped about PB and Greg's funny email closing featuring homoerotic stylings to Brandt after carefully neglecting Brandt in his otherwise full email.

Hilarious!

88slide and Korea and girls were other topics of concern, including Kris' 3 year old twin cousins, one of whom was featured in the beginning of the chat.

No cellphone

2:50pm JST Tuesday 26 September 2006 (day 13334)

D'oh! I forgot my cellphone; I'm on the way to work now, starting at 3:20pm.

Work

12:33am JST Wednesday 27 September 2006 (day 13335)

Today at work I pretty much had fun chattin' with students. Surprised when Masako nearly bolted into my room as her lesson started. Reiko said later that Masako has only wanted to take my lessons, and has been bummed that there are so few spots available on my schedule. :-) Wow; that's really smiley for me.

I was impressed that she had done homework: drawing a map of her neighborhood so she could explain where things were and what was there. At the end of the lesson she was like, "no homework?" and I was like, "そうですかな。。" so I was like, "aight; read this and this and this and this; basically 自分で選んで; you can read whatever you want."

After Reiko told me Masako had tried so hard to get into my lesson, I felt a bit bad that I hadn't tried harder to carefully think of homework for her, but truly we had been out of time and truly she can choose how much slash what she studies.

I also had Yumiko, the beautiful fragile flower of a woman who can't make a decision to save her life, but who has been hit upon recently by a guy whose card is like

           Joe-Company
         Joe Skateboard
            president
     TV * Video * Production

          contact info
          name@aol.com

Some generic-ass card with him as president but the company named after himself and a generic-ass email address... and it's a video production company??? I was like, "watch the hell out for him" in my mind, and tried in the best Japanese I could to tell her to be careful, he could be running a Japanese porn production studio

(( he had met her all, "oh, you're so beautiful; let's go get some coffee" etc, and "this week was my birthday and this afternoon with you has been the best present" and "here's my card; let's meet up again sometime" ))

So yes, he might not be lying, but it sure sounds fishy as hell to me.

I recognized what Yumiko needs: a sense of self.

"Okay, Yumiko, I want you to tell me ten things that you like."

I gave an example: "I like ice cream."

In twenty minutes she was able to come up with 8 (eight) things.

I came up with my own example each time she said one. It took me an average of 5 seconds each. It took her like 2 minutes each. ( This was not due to vocabulary problems; I was like, "Japanese or English is okay," and she was giving me answers only in Japanese. ) I put a stop to her naming different foods after a trend of 3 foods came up.

Once she got to 8, she couldn't come up with any more. She almost cried. I held her hand a bit for encouragement. The naughty part of me realized how easy it would be to take severe advantage of her.

I named my own numbers 9 and 10 while she was thinking. "Okay, what's your favorite color?"

"orange"

Pleasantly surprised that she came up with that answer so quickly, I jotted it down.

Our lesson time was up; I gave her the list of 9 things that she liked, and pulled out a new piece of paper. "For homework, I want you to write down something that you like every day."