Tuesday August 22, 1989
Posted in diary on 08/22/2009 02:57 pm by M Sinclair Stevens- 9-12: School.
- Pick up shopping bicycle from Tonai-sensei.
Postmark: Beppu August 22, 1989
It was so good to look in my mailbox and see your letter in it! My first one (not that I’ve received but that I’ve received at home. The others went to the school because apparently the postal worker didn’t know I was actually living here.)
[...] I guess I’m thinking about computers today because I got my first lesson in using a Japanese word processor this morning. (And you thought DecWord was cumbersome!) The problem, of course, is that I can’t read the menus, the keypad, or any status or error messages. However, I’m familiar enough with word processing concepts that I learned how to turn it on, load a program, open and write to a file, delete, scroll, cut and paste, change character sets, and print!
I really enjoyed using a computer and using computer jargon. The computer teacher, Abe-sensei, is a very young guy, who seemed happy to have a student who actually enjoyed playing around with the machine. Among my office staff there’s a distrust–maybe misapprehension is a better word–of that complicated machine.
Notes from 2009
The Shopping Bicycle
Tonai-sensei lent us an old bicycle that had belonged to his son. It had a basket on the handlebars which made it convenient for carrying heavy groceries (cartons of milk or bottles of Aquarius or orange juice) even if I pushed it. The bicycle was heavy with no gears (or maybe three). Many of the housewives had something similar. It was too large for JQS to manage but he tried anyway. Once he ran straight into the [post man/bank man] on his scooter. We would ride double into Beppu and then take the train back. The next time we’d take the train and ride back to Kamegawa. The bicycle had a built-in lock so that you could leave it at the train station. It also had a light which was powered the pedaling the bicycle. I’d never seen anything like it and thought it a clever idea. Once a policeman yelled Dame! at us. I had to ask Murakami-sensei what that meant. (Not allowed!). Kids rode on the handle bars and backs of bicycles all the time, even carrying open umbrellas.
Postal Service
Looking at the way that my Japanese address was mangled but people writing to me, it’s a wonder that I received any mail from the states. I think they figured that if it was in English, it must belong to me as I was the only foreigner in Kamegawa at the time. Initially they bundled it with the school mail but then they realized (or were informed) that I was living in the high school dorm.