Day 4 - Fri 4th July

This was my first day working at ACTY in Yoshinohara, this is approximately 75 mins travelling from home. Amy and I planned on spending the morning shopping at Omiya station and the surrounding area. Omiya is a major station in the Japan rail network and has tons of huge department stores. We agreed to meet Lawrence at some sort of metal sculpture thing in the middle of the station a few minutes before our train. Simple enough...

What we actually did was to get off two stops too early at HIGASHI-Omiya, which translates as east-Omiya, basically thr wrong part of town!. So, naturally, the station is not as big and the shops surrounding the station aren’t that great either. Also, we couldn’t find anything that looked remotely like a sculpture, unless Lawrence meant the electricity pylons!!!

We went wandering around, and got something to eat from a nice looking restaurant, which turned out to be a takeaway place! So, we didn’t have anywhere to eat it! We had a wonder around, to look for somewhere to eat the food, out of sight. After about 10 minutes of wandering in the blazing sun, we gave it up as a bad job and decided to go to a sit-down restaurant instead. Never mind, lesson learned...

Eventually, we decided that we weren’t where we were supposed to be. So, I called Lawrence from a pay phone. I specifically asked if there were two Omiya stations, ‘no’, he replied. So, we wondered around for a bit longer until we walked back into the station and found an English route board, which specifically stated Higashi-Omiya AND Omiya. The penny dropped, we had a laugh about our stupidity and quickly bought two more tickets to get to Omiya.

By the time we got the Omiya station, which IS huge, has tons of shops etc... we didn’t have time to go shopping! I had to find somewhere to get changed into my business gear (full suit!). The problem was that it was so hot and humid that I was literally sweating straight through my shirt – Yuk! The only solution was to wear a T shirt as a base layer, to soak up the sweat. Not a very nice thought, but I guess that this is the only way Gaijin cope in the Japanese business world.

We quickly found Lawrence standing at this ahem, sculpture, which kind of looks like a 'bean stalk'. I’ll get Amy to take a picture for you all to see. We got rid of Amy, who sort of had a vague idea of how to get back to Wado station on her own, and we went to catch our train.

The train journey is pretty straight forward, a couple of stops along the ‘new shuttle’, which I’m told is not new at all, but has been there for years!
We arrived at Yoshinohara station, and we had a brisk walk up alongside the highway to the ACTY place of work. Lawrence had to clock in at the office at the back of the building, and we went round to the front to meet Miki (I think?).

The work was pretty straight forward stuff, two lessons of 45 minutes each. The first class was with a really bubbly little 6 yr old girl. The next class was with two 11 yr kids. One of the kids is just getting to grips with English, whilst the other is much further along, so as a teacher, you have split your time and attention between the two of them whilst keeping them both busy.

After work, Miki kindly gave us a ride in her car to Omiya station; this saved us about 20 minutes, which in Japan is a lifetime! She also kindly gave us an iced coffee milkshake thing which tasted funky at first, but you could grow to love it, especially after the caffeine kicks in!

We were dropped just outside of the station, Lawrence popped into a little convenience store for some snacks whilst I went into the bookstore next door to try and secure a couple of English-Japanese dictionaries. I find it strange that we packed about 10 different books, an assortment of dictionaries; thesauruses and grammar books, but yet we forgot to bring any English-Japanese dictionaries! Typical! The train ride from Omiya - to Kuki – to Wado was pretty uneventful.

We set off from Wado for home for another quick turnaround, we had to quickly get changed into our Gi and get to the Dojo in time for Kids ‘High performance’ class, were we would help out.

We got to the dojo in the middle of the second kids class. Arakawa sensei has the top Shiramizu kids helping out in this class, thus giving the lower grade kids someone to aspire to. A good way of working and it definitely drives the lower grades to excel.

This class seamlessly runs into the high performance class, Yoshihara sensei took the lower grade kids to one side for a cool down / stamina session, before bowing them out. This left just the high performance kids, the various Sensei and of course, the three Gaijin.

The training was full of energy; Sensei had everyone run through basics and few Kata to start with. Then the class moved onto Kumite drills on pads, with me; Amy; and a few of Instructors holding the pads, the students lined up in 5 lines, in front of the person holding the pad. The students then started with a simple Okuri-ashi Tobikimizuki against the pads. After performing the technique, they would move to the back of the next line and so on. Sensei had everyone run through various other techniques, including Gyakuzuki, Tobikomizuki, Gyakuzuki combination; counter punching etc...

Sensei stopped the class, and decided that we all should do tons of stamina. This was loads of press-ups and sit-ups which left me a little sore.
The session bowed out, and we (Amy and I) quickly packed our bag and got ready to leave. We were then informed that every Friday after training, the intern is to accompany the instructors for a bite to eat and a general get together because Keiko-san, Arakawa Sensei’s wife, refuses to cook anything on a Friday night. So, sensei has turned Friday into a sort of boy’s night (with Amy). Because we hadn’t been informed before hand, we ended up going to some fancy restaurant in our Gi-pants; thankfully we both had the sense to bring T-shirts.
The meal was very tasty, and we had a good chat and a laugh with the various instructors.

It ended up being a very late night, on the way home; Sensei wanted to pop into a bookstore to look at Car magazines (he's getting a new car for his wife), which for whatever reason was still open at midnight! Anyway, the store was pretty cool, it had loads of games, DVD’s and toys for sale too so they occupied my time while sensei looked through the different Car mags.
We got home quite late, and straight to bed.