One of the best days ever

Maybe its a combination of me not having Wednesdays off normally, and of the things I did today...but this has been one of the most enjoyable days since being here in Japan.

It was a slow day starting, basically I only got out of my room at about 12:30pm. Actually I woke up at 7:30am, and finished watching Howl's Moving Castle, then fell back asleep...but that was all done in a dream state. At around 1:00pm, I went to the Nova branch in Tsunashima, to ask a visiting teacher if he could give me a Sunday off in exchange for one of my free days (shift swaps, we call 'em). Did some grocery shopping after that, and then got ready to head down for church! In Ishikawacho.

Now this was going to be the first time I was attending a church service!! Hooray! Except when I turned up around 4:00pm, I noticed there were not many people there, just the staff. I'd actually mistaken the timing of the service; on Sundays the church runs a 4:00pm service, on Wednesdays they have a 10:30-12:00 service, so I basically just slept through that. But it turned out to be great. I hung around for QUITE a while just chatting with the people there. I've met a fellow musician there, although he's fully serious about it, and makes a living as a wedding singer/recorder/producer. He also works at the church, and helps the choir. Great guy, I've heard some of his stuff, and I like it. He gave me one of his CDs today; he's produced about 3, working on a 4th. The COOLEST COOLEST thing was when I was just playing a little bit on some old acoustic piano that they had. He overheard me and asked to jam with him a while. So I got on their REALLY nice keyboard (Kurzweil, the 'concert piano' sound is just perfect) and jammed with him while he played the drums. Had a lot of fun, and it was SOOOO liberating and enjoyable for me to play again on a great keyboard and also with somebody else...one of the best feelings since coming here.

I had to run to the station to get back to Yokohama, because I was doing a fill-in job (not Nova) of a teacher friend. She teaches on the side, actually its not really teaching. Anyway, I met this guy named Nori at Yokohama station, and he took me to the place where I and another native English speaker would be teaching. IT WAS NOT TEACHING. It was soo easy and so much fun. The lesson was on phonics (sounds, like how to say a, b, c, d, e, f, etc.) and we didn't really have to say anything; just check the students' pronunciations. Basically I didn't have to do ANYTHING. And after that, I was treated to a free meal at the izekaya downstairs. On top of all this, I was paid a fairly good sum! The students were really friendly, great people to talk to...so it didn't feel at all like a job, more just like going out and getting to know some new people. Had a GREAT time.

And that's my day. A lot of fUN!

P.S. I should have written this before, but a few days ago, I was teaching a lesson on "Fears and Phobias". I asked the students what they were scared of, and one of them said:
"I'm afraid of lot of people." I asked, "Oh, you don't like crowds?"
He said, "Yes yes, but I...don't like lots of young girls....highschool girls." The rest of us started laughing after that comment. I mean, WHAT IS THAT?!