Dancing Queen?

Usually I am...



The state above is really not unnatural for me. If I'm on a dancefloor, guaranteed I'm having a good time.

But I've learned a lesson. Still reveling in last week's pay day, I decided to join a gym. I have lost a good amount of weight since I arrived, so I figured I should take advantage of it and tone up as well. The registration process was less intimidating than I thought, and though I hated to part with the one month + registration fee of 15,000yen ($150), Px would say:

"MATE! That's just about a night out in Roppongi!"

[Px has this way of describing the opportunity cost of any purchase in "# of drinks in Roppongi."]

So, I got out of work a bit early last night, just in time to make it to the gym for the advanced dance aerobics class, which caught my eye on the schedule. The "advanced" part didn't scare me very much. After all, I was a former dance troupe member and head cheerleader , so I am used to catching on to moves quickly and never had a problem in any aerobics class. And for the first half hour, I was right. The steps weren't so tough, the speed was ok, and I found myself in the midst of not only young girls, but also middle aged men, for god sakes! But, little did I know that was just the warm-up! Out of nowhere, the pace quickened, the music got faster and faster, and I felt myself thinking, "hmm, maybe these people do know how to dance..." And then, suddenly the beat picked up even more. Everyone was moving in fast forward. The worst parts were the turns, when I found everyone looking back at me, the only person in the room still facing forward. I tried to keep up but it was no use! I was smack in the middle of an entire choreographed dance that everyone in the room seemed to know except for me! "Ganbare, ganbare," I told myself. I am no quitter after all. But in the end there was really only one solution. . . I excused myself from the whirling twirling Japanese and RAN as fast as I could out of that room.

Note to self: Never take an advanced dance class in Japan before learning the steps ahead of time...
TGIF!