They say you should never go back to the scene of the crime. And after last week’s perfect workshop I would have been quite happy to bow out on a high note. But I didn’t record last week’s workshop, and I was still booked for today.

So I started off and wow, what a difference. Last week everyone was totally hyper, into everything, killing themselves with laughter and just rolling with it. Today everyone was dead! They weren’t bad at all ( I’ve had my share of moaning JETs at mid year conferences before!) they were just totally shattered and exhausted! Which made my life pretty tough, and I sort of quite felt sorry for them!! Last week I had a ton of backup stuff prepared in case things went belly up, but as everything worked well then, today I just planned a repeat performance ( i.e. a cutdown version of the Kobe workshop with a few new things). So that’s a lesson learned, always have sure-fire things in reserve for back up! So it must be one of the most low key workshops I’ve ever done, and as there wasn’t too much feedback, I was talking nearly the whole time so my voice nearly died!! ( One of the key things with lessons or presentations is to get the participants doing stuff as often as possible, to allow you a bit of a rest, bring in some change and let you prepare the next bit!). But people were still coming up to me and saying how good it was compared to the other workshops, so I guess that’s something!

Then after a quick nap it was out to the British Embassy reception. That’s always very nice! I had a few people to meet so I bought a shirt ( I didn’t posses one until now as I always wear T-shirts!), and could meet all the people I wanted to see without being recognised. Then once that was over it was back to the GE t-shirt and everyone started coming over and asking questions and saying nice things about the workshop. So then a bunch of us went to first the Keio plaza bar, which was sillily expensive, so when we got thrown out I took 25 of them across to Watami, which was great; cheap big beers, and lots of cool Japanese food ( which everyone liked, especially the gyoza!). It only cost 200 quid for the lot of us, which was cool, and what was even better was that instead of the usual JET thing of people moaning that everyone else ate 10.43 yen more of food than them so they wouldn’t pay, everyone chucked in a bit extra so we had a tenner to put in the charity box at the end and a tip for the waiter ( who seemed very puzzled by this!)

One thing you can really tell though is the difference between the different consulates and I guess it must be the level of training they get before they set off. Last week I was out with the Americans and most people were like deer caught in headlights, not knowing what on Earth was going. But the Brits tonight were completely relaxed, they all knew what was in store for them ( good and bad!), and pretty much everyone had a smattering of Japanese that they could actually use! I wonder if that has any affect the drop out/ success rates later on?