Electronic Dictionary

I nipped into Tenjin this morning with Lauma to visit "Bic Camera", a store that sells, on certain days, things at a discount. Today, for one day only, was the turn of a nice electronic dictionary (denshijishou) to be going for song. Reduced down from £200 to £50, it seems like quite a good bargain. We were there before the shop opened and went straight for the display as soon as we were allowed in. Whilst examining one of the only four boxes there, two men pushed in front of us and took one each, so we took the last two. I think the whole stock sold out within 5 minutes of the shop opening, so it must be a good deal.

It's quite a nice little toy containing more functions than I'll ever be able to translate: it does English to Japanese (so hard to understand), Japanese to English (most useful), and also English to English and Japanese to Japanese. There is also a spell checker and various conversion utilities for no good reason. Hopefully it will come in useful.

We got back just in time for the lesson. We were slightly late but Yoshimatsu-sensei hadn't started the lesson yet. We beat both Katherine and Rushen, neither of whom made it in today. They stayed out after last night's little gig and didn't return until this morning. Rushen had only just gotten up when we got back from class in the afternoon.

We learnt more new kanji today, in 10 minutes again. Not exactly conducive to memorising anything, but I tend to learn them later anyway, normally. 広 (wide, spacious), 店 (shop), 度 (degree, frequency), 病 (sick), 疲 (fatigue, worn out), 痛 (pain), 屋 (roof, shop, house), 国 (country), 回 (turn, round), 困 (trouble), 開 (aku), 閉 (close). Kanji count: 145.

Taught again for Noriko this afternoon again. Only two classes this time:

1. Rio (6 F), Chisato (6 F), K~ (5 M), Daiki (5 M)
2. Mao (F), Shōgo (M), another girl, and two other boys

I preferred the first class for some reason even though the boys misbehaved slightly. There were moments of good teaching, though. I think I prefer younger children and smaller classes. I still liked the second class, though, it just wasn't as good as the first. I had to wait for another hour afterwards whilst Noriko taught another class, but it was alright as it took me the whole time to do my homework.