My second meeting with my first student

I really hadn’t done anything all day. I just get a lot of rest. I think I racked up about 12 hours, which I feel is a waste of a day, but I guess if I didn’t get up until then, I really needed it. I mean I still got up fairly early, 11am. I still could do a lot of things and now that I’m sleeping earlier I think it’s good too.

In the morning I pretty much focused on getting ready for the private lesson tonight. I was working on new material that I would introduce to her based on some things that I learned when I was back in San Diego. I think it would help her at least get a barring on what she wanted to talk to customers about. She works at a café in Yoyogi in Tokyo. So she also has a long trip to take to get to work. She has to get up at 6am every morning to go to work. And I thought I had it bad. Well at a time, I did, but now that things are slowing down for me, and I don’t have much to do. I guess I should just enjoy that I have a lot of time off. It’s probably better than working the usual 12 hours a day.

In the meanwhile, while I was working on my materials, I was talking to my family via MSN messenger. It’s so convenient to have a webcam setup so I could communicate with them via internet for free. For me it’s actually free too, since I don’t have to pay for internet service living where I’m living. Even though it cuts out sometimes, it’s free, it’s not like I could complain, but if I wanted to, and I could upgrade my hardware too. I think that I have decided to go back to San Diego during spring break. Right now it’s only tentative that I come back during that time, but I think it’s a definite that I do return to San Diego. I didn’t really want to go back, but I think the circumstances speak for themselves. My grandmother has been hospitalized for the past few days, and I’d like to see her again. Things that I didn’t take care of before leaving for Japan are being a pain to everyone else and since I should have taken care of it, I need to be responsible and spend the time and money to go back and take care of it. I’m not sure how long I will stay there; it will probably be for a week because I’ve got to get back to Japan to start work with the New Year. My sister was right; I shouldn’t stay too long that I get comfortable again. So that’s something that I need to plan for. How am I going to spend those days while I’m back in SD.

But then there was another thing about this month that I wanted to take care of. I think I’ve got some time to go traveling this month too, although it might only be a few days, I think I could afford to get to another country. I think it would probably be well worth it, even though I wouldn’t be able to spend that much time there. I’ve been taking a personal survey to see which place would be better to go. The choices are going to Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Taipei, and Okinawa. At first I hadn’t been getting a lot of feed back, but today all of a sudden everyone started giving me input about where I should go. A lot of the reasons made sense and helped me get a better understanding of what I would be able to do while I was there. After I talked to some of my friends, the choices were cut down to Hong Kong, and Okinawa. The reasons being, I could visit Taipei with my friends being there, but that would also depend on when they will be going back to Taipei. Beijing would be thrown out because I could always go with one of my friends who spoke better Chinese than I to go there and I think it would be more enjoyable if I had a friend to go with. Seoul I heard was pretty cheap, but once again, I don’t speak the language and I don’t have any friends to go with there. Hong Kong would be a good choice because I do speak Cantonese and it will be such a short time that I really wouldn’t get into that much trouble. Everything is pretty inexpensive there and I think it would be a great experience. I could put that into the “I’ve been to another country” category. Since I’m all the way over here anyways, I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to go there and experience it. At least all the food would be a good reminder of what I’m missing out on. Then again, Okinawa could be another good choice too. It’s only about a 2 hour plane ride away and I could get some more time to hang out and do stuff. I hear it’s always nice there and the ocean is clear blue. But then I was thinking that I could go there when my friends return to Japan and I would have someone to show me around. Plus I wouldn’t be going to another country… so I’m leaning towards going to Hong Kong. Now I just gotta find out how much and all the other important crap. Not to mention I have to get my multi-entry permit from immigration. That alone might bust my trip open and I wouldn’t be able to go there, but then I could just take a nice trip to somewhere in Japan that I haven’t been to like Okinawa or Nagano.

It was nice because I was talking to friends that I haven’t talked to in a really really long time. And it was nice to get their input. It was weird that I was talking to so many people and some that I haven’t talked to ever. So that was refreshing, I also caught up on some news that was going down in San Diego too. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to visit people while I’m there. I’ll probably be able to see them when I’m just out and about in San Diego though. But I need to take care of business before I just lounge and do nothing. I learned the lesson the hard way there. I hadn’t realized how much time I had used doing this, so I was almost late for my lesson.

I got to the station as fast as I could, and made it there early by five minutes. She wasn’t there waiting for me like last time, but I was waiting for her. It turned out that she was already there. Since last week we went to mister donut, this week we went to McDonalds. From one junk food joint to another, and at first it was loud, but then we found another place where we could do our lesson. I think she’s improved a lot, but hasn’t remembered the vocabulary words that I’ve taught her so far. I think vocabulary is an important part to learning language. It could help you piece together the conversation even without truly understanding what is being said. You’ve just got to put two and two together and presto, you’ve got a conversation. So, I was refreshing her memory on that. Then we started to work new material and how asking questions could change with the substitution of some subjects and objects and verbs. I think it’s really quite simple, but I haven’t really taught her how everything works together yet. I think that might be a little too advanced for now, so I’ll keep things simple. We didn’t end up leaving till around 8:30pm, which would have been 2 hours, but I let it slide since it was fun and she’s a friend of my landlord. I didn’t feel like I wanted to have to give that back in rent. And besides I’m not there to steal her hard earned cash, I want her to learn English and I think the money is a good motivator to ensure that she values the lessons and time she spent into studying it.

Then I came home and started working on my own lesson plans for me to learn Japanese. I need to make advanced improvement before I go back to school. I need to learn Japanese and be better at communicating it. I think the first night of my vacation, I was able to pick up a lot, but I lacked the vocabulary to apply it, so tonight I started studying a lot of vocabulary. I started from the back of the book and am not working towards the front to things that I already learned and know. So I’m learning new things and then reviewing the older stuff, just to make sure that I know it. I guess when I go back to San Diego and go to places; everyone would have expected me to be able to speak Japanese fluently. I wouldn’t want to disappoint them or myself for that matter. So now I’m making that effort to do so and be able to make strides to learning more and faster and better. I did this till I was tired and fell asleep; once again, it was early.