I forgot to mention one followup to the bugs story. On Thursday evening a guy from the karaoke place upstairs came in to "have a talk" with Eri. On Friday afternoon, Eri told me and Duane to make sure we never set off the fire alarm again because it costs the other businesses so much money if their customers leave. Yeah, okay. The next thing she told me is "They wanted to register a complaint with me that our foreigner was rude to them. Deanna, what exactly did you say?"
"Uhh... I told them what room the bug bomb was in and explained it?"
"You didn't tell them anything else?"
"The only time I can think of when I was possibly 'rude' might have been when I was sitting on the top stairs with my cellphone looking incredibly bored and I asked the guy 'hey, any idea where the security system people are?' after I'd been sitting there for half an hour? Was it rude not to look overly joyous about waiting there until way after 11pm, when I hadn't eaten any food in over 11 hours and really wanted to just go home?"
"I don't know, but... I suggest not talking to them in Japanese again. I don't know exactly why they thought you would know how to speak politely, it's not like you're a native speaker, but maybe next time if all you do is speak in English, they'll just complain that you couldn't speak Japanese, instead."
Uh, so anyway, Saturday was a reasonably okay day, aside from being my busiest day now (I have 7 classes scheduled and a makeup spot). I had a lot of one-student classes so worked more on focusing on people's vocab rather than on the book lessons. I taught my grad student guy how to complain about being a grad student (I taught words like "thesis defense" and "advsior" and "getting my papers accepted to a journal" and all), among other things.
After work I went to dinner with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jessed. We met by the Tokyo Dome since we both know how to get there, and then we wandered around the neighborhood nearby, since that's where he and Katherine are staying. I bought four more packs of baseball cards and was tempted to get the 2007 All-Star set (and will sometime, I'm sure. Eventually we ended up getting dinner at a Coco Ichibanya, since, hey, curry. I hope I wasn't rude there too - I just realized I probably didn't add enough "please"s and all to my sentences, plus I told the waiter something like "oh, it's ok, we don't need the English menu" and such. On the other hand, it's not my job to be polite to waiters, so maybe I shouldn't worry so much.
Jesse and I hung out talking there for an hour or two, made plans to meet up this morning (it's now Sunday at 9:20am as I write this), and went home. I opened my baseball cards on the subway, and I finally got a Morino card!!! So now I can stop collecting, I guess? :)
I actually felt really zonked when I got home, so rather than writing an entry, I just turned on the TV and zoned out for about 20 minutes before falling asleep, watching the sports shows with gems like Nori Komada saying "Oh yeah, I remember when Sasaoka didn't suck," and Masumi Kuwata on Zero Sports saying something like "Yes, I'm really happy for the Giants! No, I don't regret my injuries this year..."
Oh, one other detail: I have a downstairs neighbor now. When I got home, I saw her lights on and I saw a ton of furniture on the building's back porch, and I heard her moving around stuff, but I also heard her talking to someone else so I wasn't sure if I should stop in and introduce myself at that point, plus I was feeling REALLY tired. I can hear them moving things around the apartment from up here -- I'm sure they can hear me too -- so at some point we'll probably meet, I guess.
"Uhh... I told them what room the bug bomb was in and explained it?"
"You didn't tell them anything else?"
"The only time I can think of when I was possibly 'rude' might have been when I was sitting on the top stairs with my cellphone looking incredibly bored and I asked the guy 'hey, any idea where the security system people are?' after I'd been sitting there for half an hour? Was it rude not to look overly joyous about waiting there until way after 11pm, when I hadn't eaten any food in over 11 hours and really wanted to just go home?"
"I don't know, but... I suggest not talking to them in Japanese again. I don't know exactly why they thought you would know how to speak politely, it's not like you're a native speaker, but maybe next time if all you do is speak in English, they'll just complain that you couldn't speak Japanese, instead."
Uh, so anyway, Saturday was a reasonably okay day, aside from being my busiest day now (I have 7 classes scheduled and a makeup spot). I had a lot of one-student classes so worked more on focusing on people's vocab rather than on the book lessons. I taught my grad student guy how to complain about being a grad student (I taught words like "thesis defense" and "advsior" and "getting my papers accepted to a journal" and all), among other things.
After work I went to dinner with
jessed. We met by the Tokyo Dome since we both know how to get there, and then we wandered around the neighborhood nearby, since that's where he and Katherine are staying. I bought four more packs of baseball cards and was tempted to get the 2007 All-Star set (and will sometime, I'm sure. Eventually we ended up getting dinner at a Coco Ichibanya, since, hey, curry. I hope I wasn't rude there too - I just realized I probably didn't add enough "please"s and all to my sentences, plus I told the waiter something like "oh, it's ok, we don't need the English menu" and such. On the other hand, it's not my job to be polite to waiters, so maybe I shouldn't worry so much.Jesse and I hung out talking there for an hour or two, made plans to meet up this morning (it's now Sunday at 9:20am as I write this), and went home. I opened my baseball cards on the subway, and I finally got a Morino card!!! So now I can stop collecting, I guess? :)
I actually felt really zonked when I got home, so rather than writing an entry, I just turned on the TV and zoned out for about 20 minutes before falling asleep, watching the sports shows with gems like Nori Komada saying "Oh yeah, I remember when Sasaoka didn't suck," and Masumi Kuwata on Zero Sports saying something like "Yes, I'm really happy for the Giants! No, I don't regret my injuries this year..."
Oh, one other detail: I have a downstairs neighbor now. When I got home, I saw her lights on and I saw a ton of furniture on the building's back porch, and I heard her moving around stuff, but I also heard her talking to someone else so I wasn't sure if I should stop in and introduce myself at that point, plus I was feeling REALLY tired. I can hear them moving things around the apartment from up here -- I'm sure they can hear me too -- so at some point we'll probably meet, I guess.
