絶望した！教えることは絶望した！

Get yourself some new orchestrations,

New routines and red velvet curtains,

Get a feathered hat for the baby,

Photograph in front of the theater,

Get an agent, and in jig time,

You'll be being booked in the big time.

-"Some People" from Gypsy

If I were to paraphrase...

Get yourself some new orange Asics,

New routines and ready for launching,

Autoship on hold in the US,

Photograph for the staff intro board,

Do some practice, verbal reaching

And in one month you'll be teaching.

What started out as an already fun touring event for BFS, featuring trainer Mike from the US teaching Power and Kick back to back turned within a couple hours to yet another amazing opportunity. The people at Oasis Shinjuku (an unbelievably nice facility - think Club Sport for those of you in Oregon) want me to come be a Group Step instructor for them this year. We talked and negotiated a bit, and if all goes well, I'll soon be working for them teaching Step! I won't go into exact details (I am a gentleman, after all), but let's just say that my hourly is really, really nice...

This doesn't mean that I won't still be working on the translation and scripting work for BFS headquarters, that's still a full go. The two will actually complement each other nicely, plus I'll have a local athletic club to use in my own practice so that I can actually stay in physical shape this year.

I'll have some pictures from the event later this week, hopefully - one of my coworkers was the main photographer for the day while I was fully engaged in the workouts. It was exhausting - doing all that after not working out for two weeks. This teaching job can't start soon enough. Still, there are a few things that I have to take care of before I can lock things in. I still have to get my work permit from immigration as well as a personal seal (inkan) so that I can sign the contract and have it be legally binding in order to work there. Still, these are all well within my ability. Tomorrow morning, Marie and I are both going out to Tokyu Hands to investigate their inkan services and then on to Hatagaya for a festival where we'll get to carry a mikoshi (portable shrine).

絶望した！