Tokyo Plus

AKA: A Very Busy Time

The month of March was one without rest. To start, my friends (Caitlin, mostly) began planning day trips to various places and inviting me on said day trips, filling my weekends. It was also the end of the school year (which runs from April to April here), which brought a lot of changes in my school life, as well as a lot of End of Year activities. As if this were not enough, I also had a few visitors from the US - a friend of mine from WashU, Jeff, and his two siblings.

Most of the time I was hanging out with Jeff-tachi ("Jeff et. al") was spent in Tokyo, a place that had, during my summer orientation, earned my esteemed "Hell on Earth" ranking due to its sheer size and overcrowded feel. In short, I wasn't looking forward to spending some 7 days there.

When all was said and done, though, I had a lot of fun; Tokyo no longer freaks me out quite so much. While I couldn't tell you of every place we visited or all the things I did, as I'm ever-so-forgetful, I can tell you that my highlights were found late one night in Rippongi.

Now, Rippongi is known as the place where foreigners go to eat, drink, and party. OJ, Jeff's brother, was determined to dance and possibly find a "nice girl" that night, so we went clubbing. I wasn't sure about all of this until we got out on the floor. OJ was not to be ignored, and decided he would showcase his abilities to the eligible ladies through salsa.

Three or four times that night, OJ would cut in on my dancing with Jeff and take me to a viewable location. Then, the salsa would begin, me doing my best to not screw up and OJ doing an admirable job of not giving me the chance. He would keep his eyes open, looking to see which of the girls were watching us, and, when he found one to his fancy, he would send me back to Jeff and make his move. Should the target ever ask about the girl with whom he was dancing so recently, well, she was clearly dancing with his brother, wasn't she? The fish was on the hook before she could realize the danger.

When I wasn't dancing with OJ, I was dancing to exhaustion with Jeff. It's rare that I'm in a situation where there's not only dancing music, but a boy who's willing to dance with me all night and a complete anonymity in the crowd. I wasn't ever going to see any of these people again, nor was I likely to have the chance to dance anytime soon, so I truly let myself go. By the time Jeff and I left, which was around 3 in the morning, I had a happy exhaustion I usually associate with the end of a Cowboy Mouth concert. I was sweaty and footsore, but very content.

(An amusing sidenote: OJ didn't make it back to the hotel until 6:30 the next morning; he was having too much fun staying out on the town.)

Jeff came back to Ota with me for a week and joined me a few days at school. Unfortunately, there was only one day in which I was teaching classes - the rest of the time was filled with the elementary school graduation, the End of Year ceremony, and the start of spring break. For those two classes and his time visiting my school, though, Jeff was a total star. Everyone wanted to know who he was, why he was here, and whether he was my boyfriend (rather, most assumed and were shocked to find he isn't). Many of my male students were thrilled, greeting him three or four times in a row (and then, belatedly, greeting me). I think he won me a lot of student interest, which I hope will help refresh their interest in my classes a bit.

So it seems that the thing I needed to get over Tokyo was nothing more than spending a couple of weekends there with good company. Who knew?