Yesterday,

I enrolled at the Osaka YMCA for full-time Japanese Language study. I have been warned numerous times that this promises to be a tough challenge, cautioned that I will have no time to do anything else, and advised that I will have to work extremely hard just to keep up. I am getting more nervous and apprehensive by the minute, leading up to d-day (classes start on the sixth of October).
After sweating out filling in the enrollment forms, there was one left over, which needed to be filled out by a representative of our organization (MUP) vouching for my character and detailing what they thought of me and my character. The very busy Dan Ellrick is the senior representative in the area, so I made an appointment to meet him at 10:30 to get the form together. Aukje and I made an appointment for twelve noon with a staffer at YMCA to submit the application. I thought an hour and half would be piles of time but not to be. As Dan put the finishing kanji characters on the form, time was running short. I grabbed the papers and ran, up the hill. I turned the ten minute walk into about a six minute cross between a speed walk and a stumbling sort or forward leaning jog. I hopped the tube after waiting for two minutes (which lasted much longer than your average two minutes do) and exited at the next station. My watch told me I had four and half minutes left for the three minute walk to the YMCA building. I repeated the above and just made it in time to meet a slightly anxious Aukje wondering what exactly was taking me soo long.
Application submission went as planned.
I accomplished this entire exercise with a tiny but pointy pebble (that was more bothersome than a tiny pebble had any right to be) in my right shoe. It was exceedingly annoying, and wasn't there until I had no time to remove it.