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Will's Tour Diary - updated daily (ish)!

Will's tour diary - What? Why? When? Where? - Shows - Seminars

Friday Nov 17th 2000

Todays show was scheduled for 10.40. We were woken by Mr Shikata at 7.30. He had a class, so Mrs Shikata took us to the school. 

We discovered that the sound system hadn't been prepared - Richard had to reconnect it. Then we were told we had a 90 minute timeslot. This was a surprise to us since the show only takes 45 minutes and has to be fast paced in order to succeed - somewhere there had been a communication breakdown. The fault probably lay with us assuming that people had read the details of the show on the homepage. 

We met the documentary maker. Hip in his spiky hair and trendy glasses he introduced himself and then watched the show from the back of the gym.

We did each song twice and used some extra games and created a 70 minute set which worked admirably. Richards voice was hardly existent, but he persevered and we swapped roles for most of the content, allowing him to save his voice for his "England" talk, and genki motivation speech. The kids had a ball and the teachers appeared to be suitably impressed. 

School lunch. The usual fun and games: face-pulling, Japanese puns and hyper-genki kids! I told them my "dog reincarnation story". They sat rapt as I described how I was a dog owned by a very cruel master. Every day I was chained up, and the tight chain cut into my neck, and scarred it horribly. Then I told them that even now, in my incarnation as a human, it was still possible to see the scar on the back of my neck. "Do you want to see the scar?" I asked and naturally they replied "Yes!" and leaned forward to inspect the back of my neck. As they moved close I suddenly turned my head and barked loudly, scaring them half to death. Their surprise turned immediately to laughter. 

They showed me some magic tricks. Then I did student weight-training but found that fourth years were a mite heavier than second years and I had to reduce the number of repetitions. Not having an inflatable hammer I improvised and we played the "Toilet Roll" game. All too soon it was time to go.

As we left the school the "sign! sign!" ambush was set, and we were only allowed to leave the school grounds after we had adorned the assorted paraphernalia of what seemed to be the entire school, with our signatures.

Coffee shop. The documentary guy chatted with us for hours. Hours. Mrs Shikata and the other private teachers who had observed the show had to go. We stayed and talked further. The documentary concept is this - for 10 days the documentary guy will travel with us in the Genkimobile, armed with a Sony VX1000 digital camera, and compile about 30 hours of material which he will later edit at his leisure. The concept of having someone film us for 10 days is both exciting and sobering. But mostly exciting!

We dropped the doco guy at Kyoto station and met Mr Shikata. We went to a sento (public bath) together. While I sat in the large pool Richard braved the denkiburo (electric bath). In this bath a mild electric current runs through the water. It was Richard's first experience and judging from his face the sensation was not a pleasureable one. I tried it. It numbed my buttocks and made my hands shake. Mentally, I had problems with the fact that normally water, electricity and humans do not play well together.

After a big bath it is only natural to eat ramen. So we did. Bath + ramen = happy. 

Will

email: will@genkienglish.net


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Opinions expressed in this diary are personal views of Will Jasprizza. They do  not necessarily represent those of Genki English, especially where he is  making jokes which sounded better at the time!!! Please be understanding!

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