Last Wednesday I woke up to a pleasant, yet cold, surprise. It was snowing! And not the weak little snow we sometimes see in Holland, no this was heavy snow, the way it was intended. So I quickly rushed my morning preparations and blog post to go out and snap some pictures before I had to go to school. As Tokyo is obviously an urban area, it is usually a bit to warm at ground level to allow snow to remain snow. Besides that, the snow turned into rain while I was in school, so after school the small bits of snow that were there earlier, had been flushed away. Fortunately, I still managed to find some nice spots to shoot while the snow was still tumbling down ever so gently.

The rest of the week was pretty quiet, although I did go for Ramen with two of my classmates. We went to a Korean ramen shop in Harajuku, the shopping area. The ramen was excellent and I got to do some window shopping. Soon I’m gonna have to try and find some awesome shoes in my size there!

Friday, however, it was time for Japans favorite pastime; karaoke! Michel and I invited all our fellow residents to come along, but in the end only Swaroop had time to join us. Fortunately Michel had invited a bunch of other people as well, including Artem, so we ended up renting our very own karaoke room with 12 people from all over the globe. We had some Japanese, American, Swedish and Canadian, am I forgetting anybody? Oh, and of course one from Holland (me, for the less perceptive).

I must admit, I was a bit anxious at first. It isn’t every day a guy from Holland has to sing badly into a microphone in front of a group of people. But fortunately the anxiety quickly faded, when I noticed singing well is not necessary when fooling around in a karaoke booth! Oh, and the beers, vodka and whiskey we brought along may have helped as well.

Anyway, karaoke is awesome! Everybody was having loads of fun picking their favorite songs, waiting for it excitedly and than of course singing it with all your heart and soul poured into it, or something like that. Though Michel and I were a bit afraid at first the Japanese would hog the microphone all evening, it turned out we (and Artem) were the ones doing that!

My Japanese class on Friday must’ve been destiny by the way, because that day we practiced a famous Japanese song: Ue no muite arukoo, or, I look up when I walk. So of course I had to (try and) sing it at karaoke. And guess what, aside from some words that were written in kanji I didn’t remember, it went pretty ok, although the karaoke version was a bit faster than we sang it in class and I of course can’t really sing.

So, for everybody’s enjoyment I present to you Rob singing Ue no muite arukoo… I am so gonna regret this…

Still able to read? Good, because after karaoke the night wasn’t finished of course. Everybody was pretty wasted, so it was time to go to the club. Which club? You guessed it, atom! So yes, I had to promise not to take any pictures inside again, so no party pictures from the inside. I did however take some pictures on our way to the club.

Inside atom they had a Jägermeister special thingy going on, so we ended up slamming Jäger shooters and drink way too much altogether. Swaroop and his friend had decided we had to do some dares. Swaroop had to kiss a guy, the poor guy never knew what hit him, I had to hit on a typical Japanese party girl, and failed miserably at the attempt, but the dare was won, and his friend had to get a group of people to dance with her, although she claimed otherwise, she didn’t succeed.

After goofing around a bit more inside the club, I ended up loosing sight of everybody and eventually went home by myself. Luckily, the metros were already running, so I didn’t have to take a cab on my own. In the metro I ended up talking to some Japanese guys and, although I can’t really remember what we talked about, it was in Japanese(ish). After transferring to my final metro, I got really freaked out by the person sleeping in front of me, what about you?

Last Monday Michel and I were invited by Artem, the Canadian whose name I couldn’t remember before , to come and see his band, Igrushka, perform at HEAVEN’s door located in Sangenjaya. Not really knowing, but kinda suspecting, what kind of music we would be seeing, we went to the place. Artem picked us up at the station, so we wouldn’t get lost. When we arrived he got a call from his band members telling him to hurry, because they’d have to play in about 20 minutes. So we hurried to the place and got there as quickly as we could, only to find out we couldn’t go in for free, but we’re groupies!

The guy at the door wasn’t impressed, so we ended up simply paying the entrance fee (a whooping 2500 Yen), and entered the place. Which turned out to be a very small “underground” venue. The best kind of place for starting bands to put the songs they’d written in their basement to the test. For the in crowd: it felt a little bit like N201, only smaller.

So Artem’s band was up first, but luckily we had a little time to meet his band members Naohiro (guitar),　Naofumi (bass) and Yuji (song) first. They are very nice guys, and were happy we came to see them. After the introductions, we had to wait a little while, during which we played around with my camera’s settings, to try and find a suitable setting for “cool band pictures”. Then Igrushka started to play.

The first thing I noticed was, that the sound restrictions we have in Holland, don’t apply here. How I needed earplugs, but didn’t have any. Second thing was, that they were actually pretty good for band that just started. I’ve seen a lot worse back in Holland anyway. It was only their 7th show, and they were rocking it!

Though of course, there’s always room for improvement. Although the energy they put out there is very nice, Yuki should try to control his voice a little better while moving around. Sometimes his voice seems to jump around a bit too much. However, I heard that with a lot of Japanese bands, so maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be done. In that case, sorry I mentioned . Aside from that, they were clearly the best band of the evening.

Anyway, without further ado, Igrushka:

After our adventures in Roppongi, I woke up the next day feeling a bit fuzzy in the head, but luckily my hangover wasn’t severe. Maybe that was also caused by the fact that I only woke up around 3 o’ clock in the afternoon, but still no hangover is the way we like it! Michel also woke up a little late, so after breakfast brunch we headed out into town. It was time for me to finally get my grubby little hands on a Nintendo DS. They are sold for about 100 Euro around here, so I just couldn’t resist. Especially when Michel showed me the Japanese dictionary on his DS.

We went to Akihabara, of course, and at the huge electronics store Yodobashi Camera I found the DS I liked: Crimson / Black. Which basically means the cover of the DS is a nice shade of red (crimson) and the rest is black. So there I was standing in line, exited to buy my DS. At the register I requested, in fluent Japanese of course, the DS I wanted, and then it was time to pay for the thing. So I pull out my creditcard, only to realize that in this store they don’t want your signature, but you have to type in the newly introduced code to authorize the transaction. Of course I forgot this number, but fortunately I had just enough cash on me to be able to buy it, phew!

However, buying the software for my DS would have to wait a bit until we found an ATM suitable for European cards. After walking around in circles for about an hour, trying to find such an ATM, I finally got the brilliant idea to try a 7/11 store. These convenience stores are located everywhere around the city, and they sure live up to their name of being convenient. They’ve got an ATM that accepts European cards inside!

So now that I had some new cash, it was time to get my game. Or actually, my R4 card. The R4 card allows you to load music, videos and games on a micro SD card, and play them from the card. This way, you don’t have to carry around a ridiculous amount of DS game cards around if you want to vary the games you play while on the road. That’s my official reason I bought the R4, and I’m sticking to it.

In the evening we were both quite spent, so we didn’t go clubbing or anything, and simply stayed at home. Sunday I woke up quite late again, but I really wanted to do something touristy. So I went to the huge Meiji shrine near Harajuku. I knew temples close around 5 in the afternoon, but I decided to just give it a go. I arrived at Harajuku, quickly entered the park around the shrine, and tried to get to it as fast as I could. I almost reached the temple, when the announcement came, first in Japanese, then in English. But I already felt what was coming, I was too late, the shrine was closing.

I still went to the shrine, and managed to snap some nice shots of the area. However, I’ll have to go there again a bit earlier in the day in order to make some better pictures. Also, although the Meiji shrine is nice and impressive, it is also a major tourist attraction. So when I was walking around there, I saw souvenir shops and loads of gaijin walking around, which gave me not the serene feeling you’d expect from a religious area. It felt more like going to an amusement park or anything. Therefore, I’ll go and visit some of the smaller temples as well, when I get the chance.

Right now it’s snowing, so I’m off, trying to make some nice pictures of Tokyo in the snow! Oh, and class too, of course .

Last night we went partying in Roppongi. Roppongi is kinda the tourist area of Tokyo. There are a lot of gaijin (foreigners) partying here and naturally this attracts a lot of Japanese people (girls!) who want to meet them. We heard that Lex was the place to go for a good party, so on to Lex we went. At the door we were a bit taken back by the entree fee (4000 Yen, or 24 Euro), but we managed to make it 3000, and we got 3 drink coins as well. Since drinks were 1000 Yen each inside anyway, we basically prepaid for 3 drinks, so it was all good.

Inside we found an awesome party going on! Lots of people were dancing, chilling and the party vibe was very nice. Also, they played normal music! Not the mind numbing rave tunes we heard in atom. Another thing, in Roppongi the girls know how to move much better than in Shibuya. Thus it was a much better feast for our eyes…

Inside, I suddenly got hit on by a kind of shy Japanese girl. So, after Michel pointed that out to me, I started dancing and flirting with her. I thought it all went pretty ok, we were dancing and getting closer and closer (without the need to tickle! ). Then, suddenly, she turned away and started dancing with a Japanese dude. I was a bit confused, so I just went for a drink, and found Michel again. We partied some more, but then I bumped into the girl again. She immediately came to me and we danced like before. But again, when we got closer, she suddenly left, and went to the same guy again. Tuff luck, for her, because I then decided to ignore her for the rest of the night and started partying with three other girls, who were much nicer anyway.

Meanwhile, Michel wasn’t sitting still either, and he had met this pretty little girl who was really into him and two of her hot friends. So, suddenly, I got tapped on the shoulder, that we were going to another club. I was like, ok, let’s go and off we went. On to 99, which turned out to be a gangsta hiphop club, go shorty! The girls inside here were smoking hot! And all of them knew how to shake their booty, it was awesome! The two friends quickly took the stage, and Michel was enjoying himself with the other girl. And I was simply enjoying the view, and partying with everybody. It was awesome!

After 99, we went back to Lex to party some more there. Around 5.30 we decided it was time to go home, so we went for a bite to eat and walked towards Roppongi station. But then the most wicked thing happened. Right before our eyes, at a large crossing, a girl got run over by a truck! Seeing someone getting run over by a truck is a truly weird experience. At first, when you see it happening, you look at it like you would do to a movie, or a video game, it looks very surreal. For me, it looked like the girls body got taken over by ragdoll physics, as she got hit by the truck, and disappeared underneath it…

We both saw it at the same time, stood in shock for maybe a second, and then, as one, we both ran to the scene of the accident to see if she was ok and what we could do to help. Fortunately the girl was hit in the center of the truck, so she wasn’t run over by any of the wheels. So when we arrived, she was already trying to get up. We helped her, and quickly tried to find out if she had any serious injuries. It looked like she didn’t have any serious injuries, she’d just hit her head quite hard on the ground, but there wasn’t any blood or anything. She could have a concussion though, since we aren’t exactly doctors. The truck driver just stood there like “uhm, shall I call the police” (only in Japanese) and we were both like, “well duh! You just ran over a girl!”

The police quickly arrived, and immediately called for an ambulance. The girl was by that time completely overtaken by the realization of what had actually happened to her and was a trembling crying mess of misery. So, while the police was writing down her information, Michel and I did everything we could to comfort her. After a short while, the ambulance came and took her away. We gave our phone numbers, as we were witnesses. But I don’t think we’ll hear much from it again.

After this thrilling experience we quickly went home, and arrived at about 7 in the morning back at our place. Of course I quickly fell asleep after again a totally wicked night of partying in Tokyo!

I just came home from a looong telephone store hunt. I finally bought a mobile phone this morning, at a convenience store (go figure). But something appeared to be wrong with the registration. So softbank called me that I should go to a softbank store. And of course I couldn’t find one. After two hours of walking around aimlessly, I finally found it. And it turned out, they needed my Amsterdam address for some reason (as if they’d track me down there…). Anyway, starting today, I have a mobile phone! My number is: +818036067292.

P.S. please don’t send me sms messages, because they won’t be delivered to my phone. Tomorrow I’ll register for an email address, to which you can simply send an email, which will be delivered directly to my phone! And of course I can answer you with my phone as well