Brian's Japan Adventure

December 1st, 2007

A very productive morning

I don’t know why, but for some crazy reason I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Around 7:00, I decided going back to sleep wasn’t going to happen, so I stared the day. I finished off the last of my iced coffee from the carton and decided I was going to have to do Happy Town at some point today. The sun was already up and bright at 7:15, so I decided I had better take advantage of that while I could, so I went out and did the laundry. Yes, I did laundry at 7:15; I even scare myself sometimes.

While waiting for the first load to finish, I decided to clean up my room a little. I emptied all the empty Pepsi and Tea bottles into a bag and put them out by the washing machine. The next bottle & can day isn’t until December 28th, and although I don’t make as much trash as some people around here that I could mention, I do make my share. I don’t want to be wading through pop bottles for the next four weeks. I did the same with the trash left over from last night’s cleaning spree and all the other trash I could find. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’m on a cleaning kick this weekend.  I refuse to go near the kitchen though; I utterly refuse to get involved with that mess.

I leave for Happy Town at 9:30, and quickly find out that was a mistake. They don’t open until 10. I already knew that, but since it’s never been a problem before, had not even considered it until now. Most places here open at 10 or even 11 in the morning. Happy Town is an exception since it stays open late (if you call 9pm late), but most stores here only seem to have one shift, so things tend to close early too.  I pick up all the usual refills, but most importantly, trash bags. I still remember how hard it was to find those the first time, and it’s not much easier now that I know what the package looks like.

When I return home, I unpack and clean a little more. I go out to the washer and hang up the dark stuff on the line, even though it’s cold outside. I wonder how well that will work out? I put a load of whites in the machine and went back inside. I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but the washer is located in a little shed just to the side of the apartment. Since Marc and I seem to be the only ones in the apartment building right now, we’ve never run into a “sharing” problem yet. There is a dryer as well, but it’s very small and low power; good enough for socks & stuff, but I think it might be a good idea not to put pants into it.

Preparing for Next Week

After getting that started, I studied my new vocabulary for chapter six of the book, and it’s almost all verbs. Verbs are tough because there are several “versions” of each verb those needs to be memorized. Overall, this looks like it’s going to be a highly complex chapter anyway (“Te Forms”), so I’d better minimize my troubles by just memorizing the stuff I do understand right away. We only have two more weeks before Japanese classes stop for the break, so I’m better Y-Sensei is going to hit this chapter hard to finish it before then.

I then turn on the computer and glance through the material I downloaded for classes yesterday. If it turned out to be garbage, I’d still have time to go back and try again this afternoon or tomorrow. It looks like good stuff. I have two different Christmas vocabulary lists. One includes a lot of “religious” Christmas terminology and one is basically “secular” Xmas words.  I’ll print out both and use whichever seems appropriate for the class at hand. I think the advanced class on Wednesday would appreciate the one that revolves around “The Nativity” as that uses a lot of unfamiliar words. The other list will be good at the university on Tuesday. I’m not sure about which way to go with the old ladies yet.

As I was digging through the rest of the material, I looked at a page I had downloaded with the verses to dozens of Christmas songs. I saved that one anticipating whatever request Mr. Kindergarten might make this week.  I skimmed it quickly and saw that it included the whole poem of “The Night Before Christmas.”  I think I’ll read it for some of the classes. For some reason, they all like to hear the sound of my voice, and a good poem like that should keep them happy.

Thinking ahead to the following week, both my Wednesday classes are going out for Christmas Break parties, so I’m not going to prepare anything for either of them. But I will still need the usual full class-period of stuff for my Tuesday classes. Maybe I’ll save the Christmas stuff till the following week for them. If that’s the case, then I need something else for this week. I think I can find something in my “reserve” pile. I still need to look through me “Grammar Games” book for some kind of game for Wednesday as well. That’s easy enough. So I am mostly done with next week’s lessons. I’ll still need to hit the Japanese stuff heavily again today and tomorrow. I have plenty of time, because all of this was finished by 1:30.  I guess it does pay to get up early!

[Update]  Not much else happened today. I went back to Happy Town for dinner around 4:30, came back, read a bit, worked a crossword puzzle and then watched some awful TV. It’s now 7:30, and I plan to spend the rest of the evening listening to more of “Walden” or studying Japanese. I guess I’ll probably do the library again tomorrow, not because I need to, but simply because it’ll fill some time.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Japan, Teaching. 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.