The week I joined judo club was pretty crazily busy even though I didn't really get up to anything 'exciting'. I played judo from Tuesday to Thursday, and gradually got better at waza and ukemi. Admittedly I got a little annoyed with the injured students who were teaching me, as I felt they were getting very frustrated with me when I couldn't do something. I had to keep reminding them that it was only my 2nd or 3rd lesson, and they seemed to be ok after that. I also got a little frustrated with myself when I couldn't do certain things, but again, I'd barely started so I couldn't really expect to be good. I just tried to keep a positive attitude :)

On Wednesday I went to play badminton after judo, and actually played pretty damn well. For the first few games, anyway, hehe. I played well in the final one too, but the majority of my shots hit the top region of the net, which was extremely frustrating. I suppose at least I'm getting the shuttle in about the right area. I still need to focus on drives, serve return and baseline shots, but I'm really happy that I'm finally getting better, at least in my very critical eyes.

Thursday night was Minato-ya night, although it was quite different to normal. I'd invited my new friend Tomoko, who for some reason decided she was going to pick me up from my house. I wanted to ride my bike so that I had the freedom to leave whenever (I was exhausted from judo/badminton etc.) but as she didn't know where Minato-ya was, I agreed to let her pick me up. So I raced home after judo to take a shower, only to have her turn up 5 minutes early. I know I shouldn't have felt bad because it was her fault for coming early, but I couldn't help it. I'd been delayed the previous time I met her too, thanks to the rain and school. Things out of my control, yes, but I still felt pretty bad.

Anyway, we got there eventually and walked in to find Nate and Miho watching a movie on Minato-san's projector. I has noticed it a while ago and asked about it, but he never really showed much interest in using it. I guess Nate decided it was time to do something with it, haha. So we vaguely watched "Mr Baseball" with Tom Selleck (lol) and chatted away while we ate. Tomoko ordered an umeshiso (sour plum and shiso leaf) okonomiyaki, which was actually surprisingly good. After a while we were joined by Mitsue, Yoko and Ewan, and I broke open the bottle of wine I'd brought. It was Ewan's last Minato-ya for a few weeks as he was off to Australia, so I thought we'd make it a good one.

Once the movie finished, Nate put on some Michael Jackson music videos, which were hilarious. He's totally bonkers, but he's got serious talent. At just after 10pm we called it a night and headed home. I'd left my mama-chari at Minato-ya about a month before and felt I should move it, so I rode that home instead of catching a lift back with Tomoko. Ah the joys of having bikes spread over the city ;)