"You will be good at flares, give it two weeks"

Yokoso Japan!

Spent the first three days in transit from Tokyo to Kyoto to Osaka.

Watched a competition in Osaka and was inspired to learn locking. Hilty and Bosch walked by me as I was sitting at the bar. I think I'm going to take a class from them on Thursday.

Speaking of classes - I finally took my first (two and a half) dance classes yesterday. First up was house. Despite how relaxing house looks - doing it yourself is the most tiring thing ever. (I will see if this is actually false after locking class today.)

Next up was Tepo from King Arc. Diminuitive in structure with bright orange hair Y and I made bets on whether or not he was our instructor. I won that bet and luckily for us too. Tepo is patient, musical, and GOOD. Some things we learned:

Air Baby

o Place the hand you're not stabbing with far out

o Practice the see-saw motion of an Air Baby by going on your head, then foot that's not on the elbow, then head again, soon you won't need to go on your head and that's an air baby

o Make sure your stabbed elbow is 90 degrees

Flares

o Practice sliding on the arm you first place down - then transfer all the pressure in your shoulder that you put into that slide into a stationary position to push yourself upwards into a flare

o Lift your legs in a slow motion mimic of the flare

o Kick one leg BEHIND the other when you flare, also kick with as much force as possible

He tied all this together by doing 6 flares.

The class after was an intermediate level one - everyone was pretty much ridiculous. I watched. Thus, 2 and 1/2 classes.