Second day of tennis practice this summer

I must admit, I’m sore. Even though I walk hours upon hours and get enough exercise, my body is sore from yesterday’s tennis practice. I only went an hour and a half too. But today will be a full three hours of practice and I will most likely be the only teacher there since the teacher that is supposed to be there had the fever yesterday.

I had wanted to get up fairly early so I could get a lot of things done, but I couldn’t even get up. It was very difficult because my body was aching with pain. All my muscles were sore, which is weird, but I like it because it meant I had a good workout yesterday. I need to get a lot of things finished before this weekend because I will be incredibly too busy to be able to take care of it later.

But I didn’t really get a chance to get them finished because my body just couldn’t do it. So I gave my body a rest because I think it really needed it. I will do laundry tomorrow and hopefully by the time I come home, everything will be clean and ready for the next time I need it. I need my clothes cleaned because I won’t have time since I will be gone all weekend long at work and when I get back to Yokohama, I’ll be leaving for Thailand. So I have to pack for both trips since they are back to back. I have a lot of laundry to do too because I have my tennis clothes and a week’s worth. I might have to do two loads just to get everything cleaned up in time.

But what I really needed to do today was get my immigration papers out of the way. I needed to go to immigration to at least turn in my application for an extension of my period of stay. I applied for a 3 year visa, but I’m only expecting them to give me a 1 year visa. I think it’s just their way to make money every time I need to apply. The lady at the front counter was really nice and helped me because I had made a lot of mistakes on the form, as it turned out. The whole process at immigration took less time that it took me to get there from the station. It’s about a 15 minute walk from Ishikawacho station, and the information table, submitting my form, waiting for one person in front of me, having the lady at the other counter look at my paperwork and me filling out a postcard took about 5 minutes. That’s the fastest I’ve ever been in and out of the immigration office. I must have picked a good day to go because I was expecting it to last a few hours or so and I was late to get going too because my body was in pain and I was walking slow as hell. It was really hot today too, and having to wear a suit isn’t fun in this weather.

But I left immigration with enough time to actually get to school on time. The next thing I wanted to do today was play tennis with the tennis team. The other coach wasn’t able to make it today, like I thought, so I had to take over. But I really didn’t need to do anything today because the students know what to do and are self-regulating. I just joined in and played a few and hit the ball around. I think that there needs to be improvement in their practice though. I don’t think that they are actually practicing to get better. They are just practicing. I mean they at least stay fit and could go three hours straight, EVERYDAY, so they at least have stamina. Plus the heat is ridiculous and everyone has funny tans. Everyone is getting so dark too. I don’t think that they use any sun block, which could be very dangerous.

The other teachers had returned from Hakone today, so the head coach came back. I was too tired to explain what they really need to work on, but that will be for another time. I don’t think that he learned that way either, so he probably doesn’t know about it. So I will show him later about my plan that will start to improve their skills, not just hitting the ball. I think that some of the students have already developed some bad habits in tennis and it’s going to be very hard to get them to not do those anymore. But on a happy note, I won all my games today. I was paired up with a 9th grader, and we beat everyone we played. I think we played like 4 doubles team mixed with junior and senior high school. The 7th graders were just learning how to keep score as they were watching us play.

I left school around 7pm, so I didn’t get home till around 9pm. That’s pretty late and I grabbed dinner in Kikuna at Matsuya. It was good tonight, but it seemed like I didn’t have enough room in my stomach. It seemed like it was small and I was stuffing myself, but that’s only because I haven’t eaten much today. I jumped on myspace for about an hour to look for some old high school friends and hit a jackpot. I found a lot of them, so I sent them add messages, but it’s highly unlikely that they will add since we weren’t like the best of friends; just people that I know. I wanted to get some packing done today, but since all my clothes need to be washed tomorrow morning, I guess that won’t be able to happen tonight. I need to be able to get all this done tomorrow because there is not much more time. I think I also need to get some money exchanged into Thailand Baht. I’d like to try to get that done tomorrow as I’m going to visit some friends in Omiya. It’s going be an expensive drinking party as I received an e-mail from my “friend.”