A Golden Week of Swing

Golden Week is officially coming to an end, but looking back, it was pretty awesome.

My Golden week was split into three sections. I got last friday off but had to work Monday (so I had a three day weekend) followed by three days off in the middle of the week, then Friday back at work and now the weekend. Not as good as Golden Week gets, but none too shabby.

To be honest, I've already forgotten the first three day weekend, although I remember enjoying it so much that it felt like four days off. I'm pretty sure there was some Dead Guy Ale in there somewhere. Maybe a guacamole burger.

For the three days in the middle of the week it was time to strap on the dance shoes. Tuesday we went to Takatsuki Jazz Street and listened to live performances all around central Takatsuki. We met up with the swing dance group and had fun dancing to a number of performances. A day outside with friends, good music and dancing is always awesome.

The next day was the Golden Swing Dance, but before that one of the local top notch dancers was giving a rare lesson, so we jumped in on that. He taught us how to adjust for fast dancing and slow dancing - something which has always been tricky at best and often impossible for Russell and I. The lessons was very well timed for us and we got a lot of use out of what we learned in the coming days. Level up!

Wednesday is our regular swing night, but the Golden Swing Dance was much more crowded than normal. All the regulars descended plus several people from out of town who dropped in for the lesson earlier in the day and two live bands. It was difficult to dance at times, there were so many people on the dance floor. I had some fun with with a new dress, makeup, contacts and curlers - none of which are part of my normal lifestyle. It was a fun night. Russell and I left Osaka around 11:30 - later than normal but still in plenty of time before the trains stopped. Unfortunately, we managed to dazedly stumble onto the wrong train enroute and ended up in Itami - not the direction we intended to go. With a bit of luck we made it back to Osaka in time to catch one of the last trains and we did get home in the end.

We got home around 1:00am and fell into bed. We both turned off all alarms and vowed to get some rest. We woke up around 9am and realized that we had another swing lesson in Osaka at 10:30. We have never gotten ready so fast in our lives. It usually takes about an hour to get to the studio in Osaka from our house, but we hit the trains perfectly and were granted a bit of slack since the lesson wasn't officially starting until 10:45. We make it just in time. Good thing, too. It was not a lesson to miss. We learned a move I had learned to mimic from watching people but never learned to do properly. By the end of the lesson the step seemed easy and way cooler than I had realized. Of course, the "seemed easy" part was all due to our awesome instructor.

We all had lunch together and several people from the class made their way to Kobe to do some sight seeing before the big band dance in Kobe that night. Russell and I split off from the group for a while but I went down to meet them towards the end of their tour at Meriken Park (near Harborland). The plan was to stage another Shim Sham video in Kobe. We stood around a boulder, ate some souvenir treats and enjoyed the sunny day. Once everyone was gathered we filmed a Kobe Shim Sham interrupted only by large stones in the grass in inconvenient places and a couple children dashing in front of the camera at regular intervals. A good time was had by all.

But the adventure wasn't over. Next we headed to Gessekai - the glamorous cabaret in Kobe I mentioned a while back in another post. Kansas City Band, a 10 piece big band from Tokyo, was playing and the location really can't be beat. The dance floor was crowded once again. It was so much fun. I even got a chance to try the new move from class that morning - and completely botched it. Son of a... Of course, messing up one move does not ruin a dance. Far from it. But this cannot stand. I will be practicing.

The funny thing was, I couldn't figure out what I had messed up - which worried me even more. Its kind of hard to fix something if you don't know the problem. Sometime around 3am I woke up and remembered, though. I was suppose to kick, not step. That solved, I slept peacefully the rest of night.

My mind was not on work today.

But now its the weekend AGAIN! Yay!