8:54am JST Wednesday 18 June 2003
Great night with ふみ - first teaching her, and she gave me a chocolate something that I've not opened yet, so I don't know exactly what it is. She set herself a goal of learning the language in Chapter 2 of the book we're using. Next week we will have a conversation with that language. "How many CDs do you have? What type of music do you like? Do you like pop music?" and the like. (not just about music, but structures like those)
Then zipped over to a Mexican food restaurant and yammered with Andrew et. al. - Stewart, Andrea, Toron (sp), Ben, James, and one more cat whose name I don't remember. ふみ basically followed the conversations, and participated as well as she was able. That rocks. And gives me inspiration that I could do the same thing in 日本語.
After dinner all the others went off to get drunk. ふみ and I did not.
On the way back to 渋谷 station, I asked her what was the meaning of some counter on a billboard, and then I realized it didn't say "6478", but "647日" with the last character being the kanji meaning day. The billboard is an advertisement for the Tokyo Expo, which will begin 647 days from yesterday. In scanning the rest of the billboard, I noted "2003先 03月 25日" It starts on my birthday in 2005!
ふみ explained most of the kanji on the thing, and I told her I had just read about the technology to be used on the tickets: each ticket will have a unique RFID tag (Radio Frequency IDentifier (I think!)), which is basically the new generation of barcodes. The difference: barcodes must be scanned by visible light (laser), but an RFID can be scanned via radio waves.
I don't know how the tickets will be handled at the Expo, but this type of technology could bring to reality instant checkout at the grocery store. No individual scanning needed. Just roll the cart through a portal and bang it's all scanned. (possible exception of food that is sold by weight). I'm sure there are one or two or a million-jillion more possibilities for the technology.
I read about it here. For the record, I predicted individual bills would eventually be scanned/monitored.