{"id":1274,"date":"2007-04-17T14:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2007-04-17T14:14:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T14:14:00","slug":"video-games-space-ace-tuesday-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"Video Games, Space Ace, Tuesday Classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got up early with Kuniko this morning and spent the morning doing the usual household chores and enjoying all the extra time getting up at 5:30 a.m. affords me.<\/p>\n

While working on the computer I stumbled on something and after about an hour downloading and another hour configuring little text configuration files and arranging things in the right place, I have a little piece of nostalgia running on my computer.<\/p>\n

Probably not many people reading this site will know or remember, but when I was young I was big into video games. I remember going to arcades and marveling at all the new ones. I remember playing in arcades upstairs in Pismo Beach, playing Pacman for the first time (in the Sonoma A&W) and crying because I lost without understanding how it worked. I liked video games so much that when I got the chance, in high school I went out and bought two giant full-sized video games. My parents were nice enough to let me set them up in the den, and (for a little while) I lived out my arcade fantasy at home.<\/p>\n

\"Space<\/a>Now I’m playing one of the games that I had so many years ago at home on my laptop computer here in Japan. Using an emulator and some downloaded movie files (from a shady source) I’m able to play my old favorite, Space Ace. <\/p>\n

I had another game, Red Baron, which I’m able to play with another emulator (MAME). Now I can replay those games in the comfort of my living room again, but this time on my little laptop. I don’t mind playing on a smaller screen – but it was a lot of fun to have the full cabinet, the paint job on the side, and to play with all the settings inside to avoid having to put in quarters. <\/p>\n

Playing Space Ace again is really cool – I don’t remember as much as I thought I would. Some parts are burned into my brain, but near the end it’s really like playing it new again. <\/p>\n

So now you know how I spent most of my day on Tuesday. Eventually I did go to work, and had three classes plus a junior high school class.<\/p>\n

It’s only my second Tuesday teaching, but I think I’m going to like my Tuesday classes best. The toughest part of Tuesday is the first class – the youngest students. One student arrived with his grandmother a full half hour before the class started, so I had to be the bad cop and tell them (politely) to come back later. Finally everyone came on time, and we had a very active class. The youngest student, Yuzuha, really tries hard to speak English, and she’s good at mimicking what I say. The other students are getting less shy and within a month will be singing songs like drunken pirates.<\/p>\n

Kento, the boy who cried through the last lesson, didn’t cry this time, but spent most of the lesson sitting on his grandmother’s lap in the back of the class. She didn’t really spend much time trying to help Kento get involved, so I talked to him a lot and tried to get him to participate. He’s still just too shy.<\/p>\n

The next two classes are really fun. One class had just three girls and one boy in it. The three girls arrived first, and when I told them that one new boy was coming, they were ready to lock the door to prevent it. I felt sorry for the boy, but he’s a little older and able to handle it. <\/p>\n

Also I had a junior high class, and this was my second time teaching these students. We are starting with a textbook, and I made up some activities and introduced some parts of the text early on in the lesson. Then, I taught them how to shake hands and do a proper greeting. Next week I’ll greet them at the door and see if they remember…<\/p>\n

In the last ten minutes of the class I told them to put away the books so that we could play a couple games of hangman. The mood of the classroom shifted, everyone relaxed, and people started to really think hard about how to say and spell words. It was a noticeable difference from when we were working on the textbook. <\/p>\n

On the way home from school I stopped in a restaurant to get a bowl of ramen (yum!) and then came home and played a little Wii tennis to kill time until Kuniko got back. She ended up coming home late from a dinner party she had with two of her coworkers, so I met her at the station at 12:30. I didn’t mind – I can sleep in tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got up early with Kuniko this morning and spent the morning doing the usual household chores and enjoying all the extra time getting up at 5:30 a.m. affords me. While working on the computer I stumbled on something and after about an hour downloading and another hour configuring little text configuration files and arranging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-ky","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}