Brian's Japan Adventure

October 12th, 2007

Marc’s Library Adventure: It’s Easy With a Guide

Got up early and did all my laundry. It seems I can do a load of dark and a load of light every five days and stay on top of it. That’s not too bad. If I wait any longer than that, the washer would be over-stuffed and I’d have to do two loads. That wouldn’t be so bad in itself, but I only have ten clothespins. OK, that’s a pretty lame excuse, I admit it, but it’s the only excuse I have. After getting all that started, I fit in another 25 pages or so of history before Marc got up. He mentioned yesterday that he wanted to go and get set up there, so I volunteered to go along as guide.

I showed him which form to fill out, and he got his library card without any trouble. The person he handed his application to spoke much better English than the person I had a few weeks back. Getting the Internet working was not so simple. We fought with his computer for fifteen minutes to find the right place to put in the necessary DNS and Proxy addresses. It’s been so long since I’ve used Windows that I’ve pretty much forgotten where they hide stuff. I have used Linux on my PC at home for several years now, and this laptop is an Apple running OS X (No Windows), so I just have no reason to know that stuff anymore. My older laptop runs Windows XP, but I use it mostly for business and don’t like messing with settings for fear I’ll lose something important. Let’s just say I am not a Microsoft fan. We could have asked for instructions, but I knew from the instructions that I had for the Apple, what the DNS and Proxy settings were, so their information would not have been any additional help. We did eventually get it going, so he should be set up for easy Internet now. I wonder if he’ll ever stop in here? I bet not!

While he was playing with his computer, I updated the blog, checked and answered a few emails, checked the weather report for next week, and peeked in briefly at the message board, but didn’t really have time to do much. I’ll have to go back tomorrow or Sunday to grab a few things for classes next week. I don’t know WHAT just yet, so I’ll have to get myself organized this evening to plan for next week. Marc’s computer then overheated and shut down, and it was time to move on. There’s nothing more useful than a Windows XP computer that overheats and shuts itself down after 40 minutes. Wow. I bet Apple wishes they could get a computer to do that trick! Or maybe not!

Overbooked

He wanted to look at books, so we went to the English section and wandered around for a while. I picked up two more today. The Dhammapada: A New Translation by Glenn Wallis and Zen and Japanese Culture by D. T. Suzuki. So between these two, the three from the mail yesterday, and the halfway finished history, I am now officially “overbooked.” Hah! Where to go next? I think the Zen and Japanese Culture would be the best follow-up to the history book. The others consist of many short chapters and quickly read material that will work well during train rides, so I will make them last a bit.

The More You Sweat, The Better It Tastes

On the way back, we stopped at a place Marc recommended called Co Co Ichiban, a curry restaurant. Curry on rice is really big here, and this is supposed to be one of the better places to get it. Mine was 900Y and was a big plate half-filled with rice and half-filled with chicken-spinach curry. It wasn’t bad, and they had lots of other kinds to choose from as well. Marc got a regular beef curry, but upgraded the spiciness to #4 (Mine was #2, “normal”). He sweat and snuffed throughout the meal and needed a couple of water refills before he was done. I’m gonna try THAT next time!

We then rode the bus back to the little station where we had parked our bikes. Rather than come home, we then went to a nearby video store and looked around. Last week he bought the first and second Lord of the Rings movies and we’re hoping to find the third one soon, but no luck today. They had a lot of movies, but it was strictly rental, and neither of us wanted the hassle of trying to apply for a card.

So here it is, 4pm on Friday and I think I’m about done for the day. I went to Happy Town last night, so I have all the basics in the fridge. Maybe I’ll go back tonight for extras, or maybe not; it depends on if I get bored. I probably will. We’ve got the air conditioners turned off and all the windows open today. The breeze is great, but it’s stirring up dust in the house. I guess the previous tenants were as lax about dusting as the current ones. Oh well, the dust will settle eventually. You should see what’s under the bed, and it’s not centipedes; I seriously think something is working on evolving down there.

[Netx Day Addendum]

A Walk In The Woods

OK, I did get bored, but didn’t go to Happy Town. Instead I explored the neighborhood behind the Kendo School. I went up the hill and visited that little cemetery that you can see in this shot way up the hill:

It was tough to find the entrance, but I saw on Google Earth the other day that there was a path back there that crossed the whole mountain and I wanted to find it. It turned out the “path” was some kind of access road that was chained off, so I guess I’ll skip it. There are signs, and I don’t know what they say, so I’ll assume it’s something on the order of “Keep Out.”

I did find a narrow path that led to the cemetery, and it was pretty hard to actually get there. The cemetery itself looks mostly unmaintained and forgotten. How do you “forget” a cemetery that is in plain site of half the city?

A Refined Rant.

I have expanded and refined my previous rant about the Japanese language class. I think the problem is larger than what I said. The textbook would be fine for teaching Japanese in America. People in that situation can take their time and learn the basics and progress to more advanced topics slowly; that’s fine for them. For people living right here, right now, it’s essentially useless. I want to know how to read street signs and menus, not the proper way to write the word “eraser.” I don’t want or need an academic Japanese language course; I need real-word “life” language.

I could lay some of the frustration on Marc, but I won’t. He’s not studying very hard, and he does slow things down; we can’t progress if “half the class” isn’t learning. But I don’t think that really is making much difference. By looking ahead in the textbook, I really don’t see where much of anything useful is going to be covered. It’s all about international students doing home-stays and stuff like that. If I get invited to stay at someone’s house during my trip I will be amazed, but even more than that, it’ll probably only be once. It’s not worth the subject of a whole book.

So I’ve decided to “move on” and take responsibility for learning Japanese myself. I finally unwrapped my Kanji Flashcards that I brought along. I hadn’t wanted to open the box or start with them until the teacher had at least explained how Kanji are used. That could be another month for all I know, so I decided to do it myself. Surprisingly, out of the first 20 flashcards, I already knew about half of them. I see them around town all the time and had basically figured out their meanings on my own already. Up, Down, East, West, Exit, Entrance, and so forth. These are easy words, I can’t debate that, but it shows me that these cards are ordered on how common the words are. If they are important, I’ll get them right away. That’s far more useful to me than learning the word for “chalkboard.”

There are two sets of cards in the box. There are 103 Level 4 cards, which are the easy ones. I at least looked at all of them, and most are very useful words. There are also about 200 or so level 3 cards, which I haven’t really perused yet. Supposedly if I learn all level 3 and 4 cards, I could pass the level 3 Japanese Language Proficiency Test for second graders. That sounds pretty low-level, but that’s going to be my goal for the rest of 2007. I want to have these 300 or so cards mastered by the end of December. After that? We’ll see. There are additional boxes of cards I can get for level 2 and 1, but there are bout two thousand cards to get to that level, so I’ll never make that in this trip.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Japan, Teaching, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.