I got up insanely early (6:30) this morning in order to go watch the gymnastics classes. It didn't really go overly well, but we had a mis-communication from the beginning I think, so that's fine. I guess he assumed that I had lots of coaching experience, and wanted to come and coach, whereas what I was 95% interested in was finding somewhere to train, which, because of them having to set up/take down immediately before and after each session, its probably not going to work out. I think neither of us was that enthralled with the idea of me as a coach by the end of the day, but I might be helping him out with his book, so there you go; that would be a much better fit!

I went to lunch with them at TAC (the American Club), which was pretty nice - I've never been to the club before so it was fun to see everything they have - an outdoor pool, bowling alley, American style diner (where we ate), restaurants, health club, beauty salon, Foosball, games, etc. It's popular as part of the 'ex pat package' and there were lots of kids there and stuff - looks like it was probably a pretty fun place to have growing up! These ex pat kids live in a bit of a bubble over here! It would be v. cool to study in an International School, etc!

Anyway, after lunch, there was just about 2 hours before soccer, and since I was in the neighborhood anyway, I figured it didn't make any sense to go home, so I went to Suji's for a drink, which was great, as usual :) Got to chat with Suji a bit, and tried to convince Maasa (sp?), who used to be a soccer player in Italy, to come out to our soccer sessions sometimes! Was very happy to see that they were really busy, which is great, we want them to stay right where they are - feet from our office! It was pretty funny because about ten minutes after I got there, just as I was cracking open the old nihongo tekistu books, Jen walked in the door! She was hosting a baby shower for her friend at Suji's, and they were about to take up a big section of the place. I told Suji about how big a proportion of the search terms for this blog are Suji's related, and scored some extra chocolate syrup in my iced mocha as a result :)

Wandered down to soccer (taking some random keitai pics on the way; see below), and played for a couple of hours. There were only seven of us, which means that we were playing 4 on 3, and then after someone had to leave early, 3 on 3. It was pretty tiring, but I was actually in a relatively low level of pain; YAY! I did spray myself down with the Air Salon stuff I got last week, and it was pretty good. It was definitely a bit different from the stuff I'd borrowed last week as there was a massive amount of menthol related freezing in it (I smelled like a stick of spearmint!), but there was also pain killer I think as well, it was all very encouraging how well it went today! I've emailed a couple of other groups about their futsal/soccer, so maybe I can get a couple of other sessions per week in which would be nice!
(It took me awhile (and a double take or two!) to realise that this handsome creature is actually a robot, and not a flag person. After the course I took about flag waving, I can certainly see why they would want to have fake people on the job!)

(survey day in Hibiya station! tons of these very studious/taking their job seriously guys were tracking the traffice through the eki today, with like 3 counters each - quite the operation from the looks of things!)
(Tokyo Tower)

(interesting child like statues at a huge temple near Tokyo Tower/the Tokyo Prince Hotel/Shiba Koen. I had no idea this temple was there until I walked past it after getting slightly lost on my way to soccer today. It looks amazing, and I'll definitely have to go back there to check it out properly later!)

When I got back, Peter was still at the office, so I just showered, made some food, and researched freelancing possibilities. I'm thinking there must be an article in the whole food amusement park thing somewhere! Since we're hitting the ramen museum tomorrow, it seemed like a good idea to keep in mind.

Hope everyone had a good weekend! Happy Oscars!
D