Weekend Update

Due to our late shifts (1-9 ish) leading to bad habits, busy schedules, and two scary experiences, I decided to get a gym membership. Scary Experience #1 occurred when I was buying lunch from a local bento store and a former student recognized me. Now, granted, her English is very very bad, but about the only sentence I could make out was: "You are getting bigger!". Scary Experience #2 occurred when an associate complained that she wasn't recognized by her best friend on a trip home because she had gained so much weight. I have been a little lazy about going to the local gym, where all you can do is treadmill or bike (and a few weights). So I decided to get a membership at Tipness. This is not as easy a process as one might expect. I figured no one there would speak English so I used babelfish to translate their webpage, figured out what I wanted, then printed a Japanese version and circled the relevent info. This was very helpful, because I was right - there was one staff member who spoke very rudimentary English. Along with my very rudimentary Japanese, we muddled through all of the paperwork (it's Japan, there's paperwork - and lots of it - for everything) in only one hour!

I went back today for yoga. Standing at the back, it wasn't so hard to copy everyone else. It helps to know a few phrases like "mo ichi do" (one more time) etc. The facilities are really nice - they provide shampoo and soap and even individual blowdryers, at stations with mirrors so you can sit down and get ready for work. Pretty cool so far.