Jokes, Japan, Coldplay, and Being Spontaneous

It was a typical Tuesday night.  I returned from Life Hurts, God Heals and sat down to read a book.  As a got settled I checked my email, which led to chatting online with friends.  a few hours later I was still chatting and was in a conversation with my friend Jennifer, whom I studied with in Spain.   She now teaches English in Moka, Japan along with some other very fun North Americans.

She told me that one of the teachers here was sick and is in the States to recover, so they were trying to find someone to go to a Coldplay concert with them in Tokyo last Thursday. I joked and said I would be there.

Jennifer knew I was joking but offered generously to help pay for the airfare and my meals while in Japan. I would have a place to sleep because of the teacher who is recouping stateside. It started to seem like a pretty good deal. We started checking prices.  Was this really going to work?

It is a great thing to be young and flexible and be able to be spontaneous with minimal dereliction of duties.

~3:30am Wednesday. I found a ticket I woke up my mom to see if she would be willing to take me to the airport.  She agreed and I went back up to my room to make it final.  I was going to Japan. I bought a ticket for the wrong date (for some reason the website assumed I wanted to make arrangements to travel a month from that day instead of that day – go figure).  I cancelled that ticket and bought the one I needed. I packed my bag in about 45 seconds, ate some breakfast, grabbed my passport, and made my way  to the airport.

~9:00am Wed flight from Indy to Dallas

~12:05pm Wed flight from Dallas to Tokyo

~4:13pm Thursday train 1, train 2, lots of broken English and me being confused

~7:40pm Thursday walked about 200 yards up to the Saitama Super Arena, Jennifer and friends were outside with a tickets. We walked in, grabbed some food, and about 10 minutes later Coldplay started their set.

Be careful what you joke about.

More stories from my Japanese adventure to come.

Pray for Josiah’s health and continued recovery.

May the Lord’s will be done,

CWillz