I spent the day freezing whilst watching girls in leotards simultaneously freeze and dance. My main job, though, was to serve as navigator, but I even let a female do that. Sort of.

Today was the it’s-the-end-of-something-so-let’s-dance-in-the-cold-performance (something like that) for our youngest’s Rhythmic Gymnastics group. The RG powers-what-are assemble clubs from around Saitama Prefecture and they put on an afternoon show. (There is, in fact, a morning performance with different clubs, but we didn’t have to go to that.)

They choose the end of February because, well, I’m not sure. I think it’s because many of the girls are finishing with the clubs before moving on to high school and/or junior high. Or it’s because that’s the best time to schedule an unheated gymnasium.

I started the day with a private class that I’m teaching while the regular teacher is out of Japan. I then got to serve as navigator during our trip to the performance site. However, this time I used my smartphone as the navigation system because real maps require effort. The navigation system (Google maps with its female voice) is pretty good–I especially like its on-the-fly traffic warnings–but has an annoying tendency to announce a turn a few hundred meters in advance and then to say nothing until saying “turn —” without any warning.

Once we got to the arena, we managed to get a good seat, but our youngest’s performance was the 13th or so on the program. This meant we got to sit in the cold gym watching performances that had to meaning for us. (Note: for reasons involving sadism, Japanese public gymnasiums are neither heated in winter nor cooled in summer making them hellish pretty much all the time.) At one point I broke out my gloves to keep my hands warm.

Our youngest finally performed, did a good job, and then we got to wait for a few more performances.

That was followed by decades of picture taking.

The return trip was mostly uneventful. We pitted our car navigation system versus Google Maps. (I’ll post about that result another day.) Along the way home, though, we managed to buy chicken and bourbon.