Today I had a meeting and the food was a little interesting to say the least, basically because everything was alive. They set up a BBQ on the table and brought out a massive platter of crawling, moving live shell fish!! I had never seen anything like it. The jumbo prawns were fighting each other to jump off the plate onto the floor (seriously!). And you had to hold them on the BBQ so that they didn’t run off the grill. But it was very nice, and obviously very fresh! Then after lots of talking, the boss of the restaurant came up with a refrigerated box. I had had a few sakes by now so didn’t quite realise what was going on. But he put his hand in the box and pulled out a LIVE OCTOPUS! Which he then plonked on the grill and had to hold it there to stop it running off down the table. Oh my goodness. But it tasted really nice! Well, that’s Japan for you, even after all this time everyday I still find something very weird and wonderful! Actually before I came here I thought octopus only lived in the movies, I didn’t think I’d end up BBQing a live one! People always ask me if I’m always genki. The answer is, no. Basically to give good presentations to adults or kids you have to be genki to get good results, so then I become very genki and outgoing and it works. But normally I’m just, well, normal. These last few weeks I’ve spent all my time doing the DVD and haven’t had any meetings or presentations. But today I was asked out to dinner by a publisher who’s job is to “make Genki English famous”! Thing is I’m still full of cold! But I got wrapped up in all my winter clothes and on the subway just kept saying to myself “Think Genki, Be Genki”. It didn’t work. My eyes were just streaming on the the train! But eventually I started getting a bit better, and by the time I met everyone I had a big smile and was trying to be as genki as I could. And it worked, because in half an hour I’d forgotten all about having a cold. Mind over matter, eh? Of course the strange food helped! Anyway the meeting went really well, talking about the new DVD (it’s crazy that I can show demos of it on my phone!), and lots of new products. There were people from the bookstores there as well and it was great to get their feedback.