Entries this day: Japanese_trial_lesson Work free_hugs_extravaganza

Japanese trial lesson

11:52am JST Thursday 25 October 2007 (day 13728)

The trial lesson was nothing like I expected: me and a teacher determining my Japanese level and asking what kinda lessons I want. That was a "trial lesson" at Gaba and EV. This trial lesson was throwing me into a class and hoping I could keep up.

The good news:

1. one guy said the school was really good, but really difficult (I wouldn't be able to do anything else)

2. I could keep up (I was definitely ahead of the class)

3. I'll go back tomorrow to talk to them and ask about the class level

Work

11:55am JST Thursday 25 October 2007 (day 13728)

The goal at work today is to "add 6 more date-search-fields like these. For each date, there are separate fields for year, month, and day. And for each there's actually a begin date and and end date.

I certainly won't be typing all those out by hand.

So far, I've moved the existing two date-html into a function so they can be called by passing an array for field name (for forms) and date name (for humans). The output HTML matches except for whitespace. That's certainly good enough for me.

12:51pm JST Thursday 25 October 2007 (day 13728)

Shit. I just realized that I did that cool work on the wrong file. Well, now at least I know how to do it.

And probably I can just reuse the code.

4:35pm JST Thursday 25 October 2007 (day 13728)

Aww yeah.

I think I beez'm done.

Gonna take a break just to make sure.

あれ？

5:59pm JST

Nice break.

I thought today was payday. I ain't got paid yet.

free hugs extravaganza

9:55pm JST Thursday 25 October 2007 (day 13728)

Wow. tonight was quite the FREE HUGS superlative!

Met the doublestunt couple; they are circus performers and will be performing tomorrow and this weekend in Ueno Park! Wow! At first I thought the woman said "Syracuse" when she said circus. Not sure where they are from.

Met Roxanne and Rafael, both French, and both into the "FREE HUG Scene" (is it a scene?) and encouraged me to join their group on Facebook! Woah; I never thought of that...

Met three little high school girls who stood around for 30 minutes asking me questions "do you have a girlfriend? what do you do? how long in Japan? do you like Japanese? etc etc plus why are you doing this? what does hug mean? blah blah blah," all in Japanese (which I guess is why I would get the same questions in English when I worked as a teacher).. ((at one point, はるか called her boyfriend and reported that he was mad at her for having given me a hug; I told her friends みゆき and りんご (never got her real name) to support her in telling him to relax...)) At one point, there was a chaotic crowd of rambunctious hugs and about 10 people standing around to watch slash join. They all drifted away and then when Tetsuya showed up in a Superman suit with tens of FREE HUGS signs, the three girls (still there) squealed and joined us for another 20 minutes or so.

Just as I was leaving, two やまんば girls walked by and looked, but didn't participate. I had my FREE HUGS sign in my bag, and was putting it on my shoulder, but was still close enough to the group that I could bring up the topic without difficulty. I was like, "why didn't you free hug?" and one of the girls was like, "uncomfortable feeling" I go, "really?" and she's like, "oh, not with you, but yeah." I was like, "yeah yeah of course."

I asked what line they were taking and it turned out we were headed for Tokyu Toyoko line so I asked to what station they were going. They were like, "Jiyugaoka." "Ah, the Oimachi line," to prove that I wasn't a complete stranger to Japan (just strange, but not a stranger) and continued, "I'm meeting my girlfriend in Nakameguro," to further tell them I wasn't trying to connect in an inappropriate way. I said bye at the top of the escalator as they went to get tickets. I hopped onto the first outbound train. Before it left, they mosied by to the second outbound train, where it was likely they would get seats. We waved and that was that.

I really wanted to get a picture with them, my first (1st) time in Japan to have any sort of conversation with yamamba girls.