Oh….dear Lord, how to put the last 24 hours into words. As I type this, I am exhausted to my core. Every inch of me is weak, stressed, and tired. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I had a great time getting to be this way, but….oh man. I’ll just get started with it.

So, yesterday, the 22nd, I’m kickin it around the house, getting ready to go meet Greg when he gets off work for the Armin Van Buuren show we’d been looking forward to. I get all dressed and ready, and I head out. I meet up with him in the train to Kashiwa to meet one of his friends, and have a quick drink. His friend doesn’t come through, so we chilled outside the station and drank Yebisu and whiskey.
A bunch of kids were sitting around playing guitar and singing, and one guy was singing that “Last Christmas I gave you my heart” song so we started singing along, and I remarked on the irony of hearing that song here in Japan. You’re never safe from that damned song. It really is everywhere.

So we got on the train and headed to Shin Matsudo, where we hopped on the Musashino line express train to go to Shin Kiba, the location of the venue: ageHa @ Studio Coast. The problem apparently with that line is that it forks, with little warning which fork it will take, and according to Greg, it sometimes just stops at a station then goes back the other way, again with little warning. But we made it to Shin Kiba without a hitch by about 11pm, and walked towards the venue, when we saw four giant skylights and a massive building across the river. Sweet action. This was a huge event.

Anyway, he played some amazing music, and we all danced a ton and it was great. When 4am finally came along and Van Buuren handed off the tables to Yoji Biomehanika for the closer set, Greg and I took the chance to get some water, and crash on the steps for a bit. It didn’t take long for us to realize it was time to head out, we were beat to shit.

We got our stuff, and made our way back to the station, which still hadn’t opened yet since being closed for the night. We popped into a little rice bowl shop and had something to eat, and hopped on the 5am train to start heading back towards Shin Matsudo. Well, hopped isn’t a good word. Hobbled…dragged ourselves, something like that.

I got home at about 6:40am. I set my alarm for 2pm since I didn’t need to be at work until 5pm, and crawled into my very most comfortable of beds, now that I’ve figured out how my bedding is actually supposed to work, and went to sleep.

WRONG. I wake up at 10:58am to what I thought was my alarm. But no, it was Nova Personnel. “Is this David? Yes? David, why aren’t you at work? What? Yes, you were supposed to be there at 10:50. No, not 5pm. Do you have your lesson cover sheet? Yea. Well, when are you going to be there? Ok. You realize of course that there will be a deduction from your salary as a result of your absence from however many lessons you miss. Alright. Bye.”

Yea. I booked it out the door and caught a taxi to work. $20 and 40 min later I was at work, and only missed one lesson. Fortunately Allen had a free period to start, so he covered my lesson, and I had a free period after that, so no one’s lesson was/would have been cancelled. I felt really stupid, and bad. I remember looking at my schedule on my phone and seeing 10:50am on Wednesday and saying “why did I put that in there wrong? I work at 5 on Wednesdays” and changing it. Ugh. I worked my lessons, came home around 3pm, and slept for another 4 hours. Now here I am, writing this, and I will go back to bed as soon as I finish. Every muscle in my body is sore from 5 straight hours of dancing, my mind is a wreck from the stress and I’d do it all over again next week if I could. Minus the part where I missed work.