Oh Dear sweet Jesus Lord....

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. 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.
While we were drinking I took a picture of a sign on a nearby ashtray that read: “A lit cigarette is carried at the height of a child’s face.” Also, 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, 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.

Once we were inside, we had a couple drinks, and started in on the main stage arena, one of four stages at the event. That early in the night, maybe 11:45, there weren’t too many people, but Greg and I were just getting down listening to DJ Remy. It was funny because the event cameramen were pretty much always filming us, doing close-ups and all that. People were just watching us dance. More and more people migrated onto the dance floor, and it was fun. We decided to explore the other rooms, and the second, the Rose Room, was rockin some good beats. So Greg and I start dancing, and there it happens again: “Hey! Watch the Gaijin dance! Wow!” Everywhere we went, some or other brave Japanese kids would come dance with us and we’d all scream and laugh and own the place for a little bit. We must have talked to a dozen or two random people that just wanted to have a good time near us during the course of the night.

After we got good and tired from that, we went for another drink, and these people in like, I dunno giant kinda Gorilla suits with super long arms and pogo-stick kinda things attached to the ends were bouncing around the bar area with flashing green lights and bein all crazy and rave-ish. It was actually kinda creepy. I imagine if we were on E that might have been cooler. We decided to opt out of the creepy monkey people scene, and went to check out the tent.

The tent was awesome too, great music. They had these giant inflated floating jellyfisy and sea urchins, and there were little bubble machines so you’d be dancing and bubbles would float in front of you. We started dancing with this group of Japanese kids who were havin a good time, and we were bouncing up and down dancing and havin a great time. One of the girls seemed to really like Greg, and was all smiles the whole time. Very Genki. It was cute. I was starting to get pretty tired at this point, so I went to the back of the room to chill out for a sec, and Greg eventually joined. We worked on our beers, met some more kids, danced a little more, and decided to go check out the main stage again.

Armin Van Buuren was just starting his set when we got in there, at about 2am. After that, the next two hours were just me and Greg working our way to the front of the dance floor, going nuts and loving Van Buuren’s set. It was amazing. We were dancing for the next two hours straight, and holy good God….so tired. I felt bad honestly wondering when his set was going to end. Little did I know at the time my ticket had the schedule on it and I could have just looked at that. Anyway, he played some amazing music, and super Genki girl and friends showed up behind us and we all danced some more 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. Fuck me. 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. Fuck. 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.