Today was a bit of an experiment! Instead of a free one hour workshop at the bookstore, today was a 6 hour workshop charged at 10,000 yen per person. The idea being that people who are serious about improving their teaching techniques would attend, and I wouldn’t have to spend half the time doing the…

OK, that was one too many beers last night! Today I traveled over a thousand miles, from Oita in Kyushu, to Okayama then to Tokyo, and I must admit I didn’t enjoy one minute of the ride!!! But for the actual workshops themselves I flicked the switch, became genki and really enjoyed them. It’s my…

When I do the shows or workshops, as a trick to get the teachers, and kids, to speak louder I always say things like “Oh, but in Okayama yesterday they were so much louder” and it works like magic. And people always ask where the best places are. To be honest the best kids have…

The plan was to do a full day yesterday then today get the teachers to actually do some teaching. The idea being they’d have a nice safety net and I could give them lots of feedback now they were in the “it’s OK to make mistakes” frame of mind. I always knew this was going…

Now this is what it’s all about! Instead of just a one or two hour introduction, this is a full on two day set of workshops where I can spend half a day going through the basics and confidence building, then spend the rest of the time showing new techniques and actually letting the teachers…

This coming week is a very big week with lots of workshops, starting with a 2 day one in Okayama. So there was a ton of prep work to do, to make sure I had all the materials with me to do any of the themes if asked. Also, after talking to the teachers last…