For any of you who haven't read my recent Facebook post, here is the story of my latest adventure.
This wonderful day started, ironically enough, with a train accident.
No, not the train I was on. The train several trains in front of ours on the circular Yamanote line, amazingly enough. Since it's a circular line, one accident stops the entire circle from moving. We were stopped at a station called Ebisu, about halfway between my house and Tamachi, where I go to school. We got in to the station, and we didn't leave. After we'd been there a couple minutes, an announcement came on saying that there had been an accident between Gotanda and Osaki stations, a few stations ahead of us on the line. Although they didn't give us any details as to the nature of the accident, I found out later that the accident had caused a chain reaction of trains hitting their emergency brakes, sending people (including a couple of my friends who were riding the Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines at the time) flying. We were far enough back that it was a simple slow-down-and-stop.
At this point, I knew that the delay would be enough to make me late for school, particularly so that I would miss the kanji test, my only real motivation for going in the first place - I've grown weary of sitting in the same room for 3 hours doing the core Japanese course. So...
I decided to just say 'shove it' to school for the day and I hopped off the train to go explore Ebisu, an area I'd had a passing interest in for some time, and the place where our train had decided to stop due to the accident. When the opportunity arose, I decided to take advantage. I walked around and found it to be a very charming area, with a fantastic little entertainment area (restaurants, shops, cinema, etc.) called Ebisu Garden Place. It reminds me a lot of Bridgeport Village, for those of you readers in Oregon who know what I'm talking about. As it was still relatively early - around 9 am - there weren't too many people there yet, so it was very serene and beautiful - nothing but the sounds of the various fountains and the dull hum of a city waking up in the morning. After walking around for a while, I popped in to a little bakery cafe called St. Germain for a strawberry crumble muffin, an old-fashioned doughnut, a ham and cheese sandwich on french toast, and a cup of coffee. I stayed in there for almost an hour, casually noshing and reading my book The Mirador. Oh, how I've missed reading for pleasure!
So, after a lovely morning, I hopped on another train that was able to get me directly back to Ikebukuro, and I decided to do some work on two papers that are coming due in the next couple of weeks. I was expecting one or two good pages on each one. I finished them both - each over 10 pages. Now my workload is significantly lighter and I shall have a relatively clear head from here on out, I daresay. Good times!
The other big development is that I now, thanks to my contract at Oasis, have access to their fantastic club facilities. I'm finally going to be able to get going on a regular workout regimen - and not a moment too soon. I'm going to start teaching event classes just before New Years, and I have a regular class starting in January on Saturday afternoons. Woo!
絶望した！
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