… So how about a video?

… At the gaybar, gaybar!

But, before that, I had to check out Igrushka perform at a tiny venue with a big name, Manhole. Situated near Ikebukuro station, starting bands can perform here. But whoever came up with the name for it, certainly didn’t know a lot about the English language. That aside, Igrushka had a very nice show again, although the other bands that performed this night had very nice sets as well. Very skilled musicians, and fun stage moves. Although they were a bit too studied for a “true rock experience,” but hey, this is Japan.

After the show, me and Artem hurried to Shinjuku as fast as we could, because over there it was time for a good old evening of, you guessed it, karaoke baby! This time we were with a small group, so we had a small karaoke room as well. We didn’t have as much room to move, but the atmosphere inside was nice and cozy. And we had some wicked projections going on on the walls.

We had an awesome karaoke night, with Sam singing beautiful Japanese songs (fluently), and Artem singing Billy Jean in an hilarious way. We even sang staying alive, by the Beegees and Michel and Chie sang the tonari no Totoro (my neighbor Totoro) theme song. But after karaoke, we found ourselves in quite the predicament. We were in Shinjuku, had missed last train to go to another party area, and had no clue on where to go.

Well, that’s not quite true, Sam had a deep knowledge of the clubs in this area, but these were all gay clubs. So after a long time of standing around doing nothing, we decided to go ahead and follow Sam into a gay club. I had never been to a gay bar before, so I must admit I was quite curious about what we would find in there. We went to a club that was packed with men (obviously) and ordered our drinks.

The first thing I noticed was that the men working there were all very nice and “fabulous” (wink, wink). The second thing I noticed was that it was just a club like any other, only the women / men ratio was severely against us. Of course we encountered the typical “fags” who dance with their hand bent, and their ass out , but that was only to be expected. Fortunately our view was brightened up a little by two gorgeous girls making out all the time, right in front of us.

All in all, we had quite some fun in there, but after a while we decided it was time for a change of scenery and went off to get some beers at the Hub. At the Hub we drank some beer towers and ate some food, after which we decided to go look for a place to play some pool, until the trains would start running again. We were walking around, looking for a suitable place, when all of a sudden, Hellooooo Kitty! So pool was off, time to take pictures .

The next day I spent working, but in the evening I was going out to meet up with Swaroop and Joy in Shinjuku. We were supposed to meet at 10.30 at the Hachiko statue. But they showed up around 11, finding me waiting for them for a long while, frozen to the bone. They brought Joy’s friend Nyree along as well, and we were also joined by Artem. Swaroop had also invited a Japanese friend, who turned out to be a very cool, hip Shibuya dude and he brought a friend as well. So then we could finally go off and try to find someplace warm and get ourselves a drink!

We went to a small bar, where they had cheap drinks (300 Yen for a beer) and a lot of foreigners. We met some American guys there, who ended up chugging beer down our throats. Of course I kept our Dutch pride safe, and chugged the beer without a flinch, pff Americans . We stayed in that place quite a while, so when we left, we were all pretty wasted. Time to go to the next place!

We went to a club, which had an indie rock night that night, which turned out to be a very nice change from the electronic music I have been hearing in all the clubs lately. Bernd, you would be so proud, I actually liked the music a lot. We ended up creating a tiny moshpit with a couple of dudes, which left me with my face bleeding (slightly) and Swaroop all black and blue. It was great .

Then, while I was talking to Joy, she told me that Nyree had dared her to kiss me and if I wanted to do that. Who could say no to that . so we ended up kissing on top of the stairs, for the whole club to see. Saves explaining things later on, I guess. We went home together, but before we got there, we of course took the wrong train. After about 15 minutes of riding it (the train!), we got off only to find we had just made it to Shinjuku, and somehow bumped into Swaroop and Nyree there. We took Nyree with us, and left for Noborito, where Joy lives.

We had a very nice Sunday the day after, which unfortunately was brutally disrupted by the fact that I really had to work again. But all in all, yet again a very nice weekend in Tokyo!

The company I currently work for, Qelp, attended the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. At that congress, Wouter Deelman, qelp’s founder, was interviewed by Edwin Boogert from emerce. So of course I have to show that interview to you all, Qelp is getting famous!

Wouter Deelman (Qelp) over buitenlandse expansie from Erwin Boogert on Vimeo.

On Friday I had a day off from school, so I decided to finally go out and look for the daito-ryu roppokai aikijujutsu dojo I had found online. I brought a map, where I had roughly located the address I was supposed to go and went off into town. I took a train to Otsuka station, which is near Ikebukuro. From Otsuka I started walking toward the address I brought with me (both written in kanji, and in plain old romanji, our alphabet).

After walking for about 30 minutes I found the general area where the address was supposed to be. It took some quick figuring out how the addressing works here (numbers everywhere!), but after a while I kind of discovered the system used in this area and I quickly found the dojo. Or so I thought…

It turned out that the address I found online wasn’t the address of the dojo, but of what looked to be a retirement home. The address I found was the address of Okamoto-sensei, the head of the daito-ryu roppokai aikijujutsu “family.” So instead of finding the dojo, I found the home of a nice elderly couple, who were very surprised with the visit of a gaijin trying to find the dojo.

Okamoto-sensei kindly invited me in and started explaining where I could find the dojo, by drawing a map and explaining everything in Japanese. His wife quickly turned to the kitchen and prepared some coffee for us. Please note that I normally do NOT drink coffee, but in a situation as this, one simply can’t refuse. So I had two cups of coffee, which I felt buzzing through my system for the rest of the day.

So I sat there, sipping my coffee and listening to Okamoto-sensei explaining how to get to the dojo. His wife, meanwhile, was curious as well of course, so I was talking with her a bit as well. All in all it was very nice, and I felt like I was 12 again, visiting my grandparents. After about 15 minutes of explaining and map drawing, Sensei realized this was never gonna work this way, and decided to change plans. Instead of explaining the dojo location, he directed me to Myogadani station, where he’d pick me up Saturday at 18:20, and take me with him to the dojo to see the training.

After his explanation he went out to go fishing, and brought me with him to a station that was a 1 minute walk from his house. Hmm certainly beat the 30 minutes I walked before. I quickly went to Shinjuku, where I contacted Michel to see what he was doing. Of course he wasn’t at Shinjuku, but at Ikebukuro (remember, I was there just before), so I took a train back there and found him having a drink with Chie.

We went for dinner in a Japanese place, where people eat and drink in small separate rooms. We were sharing our room with a group of Japanese girls, who were drinking heavily and having a lot of fun. However, we were totally ignored by them. So no interesting stories developed there, but we did have a very good time.

After dinner me and Michel met up with Swaroop to go clubbing in Roppongi. He took us to Yellow, a kind of expensive, but very nice Techno club, filled with an awesome party crowd. We partied like crazy, especially Swarooop, who was drunk as hell (go Swaroop!).

Towards the end of the evening I was dancing quite in my own world to a classic tune, when suddenly my bubble got popped by a small drunk Japanese girl, who decided it was a great idea to start dancing between my legs basically. She turned out to be very drunk and stumbled around me, leaning against me whenever she got the chance. I must be honest, I had now idea how to deal with the situation. I danced with her a little bit, drank the drink she offered me (free booze!), and after a while she just left again.

Somehow, that could’ve turned out much better for me, but I guess I’m not very good with totally wasted chicks . I asked Michel, who’d witnessed the whole scene, if I looked like a total idiot. But he assured me that that wasn’t the case, I looked like a nice guy, he said. Damned! Always the nice guy, I tried so hard becoming a bastard, but I guess I just ain’t cut out for that… Or I wasn’t drunk enough.

The next day I was, of course, at the station at 17:45, never take any risks in situations like this. At 18:10 Okamoto-sensei arrived, pleasantly surprised to find me already there. We walked, slowly because sensei is quite old, to the dojo, talking about the weather and how his fishing had been (always remember the little details). When we arrived at the sports center where the dojo is located, we sat outside for a bit and talked about his students, while sensei smoked a sigarette. Just before we went into the dojo, he mentioned going for sake after training, with the other sensei and his prime students.

During the training, I wasn’t allowed to participate, only to watch. I could stand or sit anywhere outside of the practice floor in order to see what was going on. The training was very interesting to see, although it was totally different from my usual fudoshin ryu training back in Holland. Where we usually train in pairs, or really small groups, here the training is in large groups. Every time one of the people in a group has to do a move, where he is continually “attacked” by one of the other members of the group. Once everybody has attacked, the next person in line has to do the move.

In this way, you get to do the move a lot of times in a row, very quickly, while you get to practice how to react to the moves a lot as well, when it is not your turn. Using this way of training, you hardly ever have time to pause, because you are constantly either doing moves, or rolling around after a move was done on you. I’m very curious as to how I’ll like this kind of training. I didn’t take any pictures of the training itself, but I did snap a shot of the dojo before training started. Quite different from the small dojo we normally train at in Amsterdam.

After training one of the students came up to me, and told me that sensei would like to drink sake with me and asked me if I wanted to join him. Of course I wanted to join him! It is one of the greatest honors a student can receive. So after sensei had finished dressing in his normal clothes, we went to the restaurant near the station, where he had reservations.

So there I was suddenly eating and drinking with the top sensei of the roppokai dojo, and two of the best students. The sensei are all men of age, but I didn’t realize how much, until Yamamoto-san (one of the students) informed me that Okamoto-sensei is already 83 years old! I had no idea, although you could see he is quite old, I didn’t give him much over 60. Quite amazing, even more considering his schedule, which he showed me. In the next three months, he will be going to America, Italy and Russia to teach and probably see how the dojo over there are doing.

Needless to say, it was an awesome dinner. It is quite special to be drinking and eating with old Japanese men. I learned a lot, ate food I never ate before (everything very tasty), spoke about Holland of course. And of course, the men were explaining all kinds of things to me. Sensei was constantly making jokes about everything, which were quite funny. All in all, it was an awesome experience!

I took some pictures of the dinner, but wasn’t allowed to place them online. Apparently, some American guy had done the same, and afterwards claimed he was sensei’s best friend. Needless to say, they didn’t like that very much. However, when I’m back home, I’m of course free to show the picture to anybody I like .

After dinner I was pretty much drunk as hell, and went back to the guesthouse, where I spent the rest of my evening watching movies and chatting with Renato, Dirk and Vincent. It was a good weekend! Tonight I have my first official roppokai training, wish me luck!

My friend from Japanese class in Amsterdam, Balazs, had sent me the contact details of Saki-san, a Japanese girl who currently lives in Tokyo. I contacted her, and last Saturday we went on a date. However, since we would meet at 2 in the afternoon, I of course still had time to go clubbing on Friday. Artem met up with us during dinner, after which we went to Harajuku, where I tried to buy the shoes I really wanted at the time.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have the shoes I wanted in my size, so instead we just went for some crap. With crap, I of course mean the icecream wrapped in crêpes they sell everywhere in Harajuku. It is a very popular snack, where you can choose a, usually sweet, filling, which they roll in a warm pancake. Although I went for ice cream, it is also possible to get a cheesecake filling, or even ceacar salade. Although I don’t think I’ll ever try it with anything other than ice cream.

Outside the crapshop, we were fooling around a bit, of course impersonating Arnold, the governator, badly (get down!), when two Japanese women walked by. The look on the face of one of them was awesome. We were fooling around, totally ignoring everybody around us, making way too much noise for Japanese standards (read: the average noise people make in our metros). The look the woman gave us was one of: “what are they doing, oh they are gaijin, pfff,” as she strolled by disdainfully.

We went to our guest house, to start the alcohol consumption required to guarantee a good night of partying. Back in the guest house we were basically bullshitting the whole time. Making fun of everything and everyone we could, as much as possible. Around 12 we left our house to catch the last metro to Shibuya, where we were planning to go to Club Asia.

When we got to Club Asia, the party seemed to suck a bit, so we went to another club across the street. It promised hip hop, rmb and dancehall, and boy did we get it. Inside we found a small, but tall club. It had a small area where we entered, then down the stairs we found an even smaller area where people could chill a little. Downstairs was the biggest area, where there was room to dance. Being the amazing hip hoppers that we are, we kinda stood out of the crowd, which consisted mostly of blinged out Japanese and Black people.

We had loads of fun and were even surprised by a performance by a Japanese rap group. This was awesome, because just before the group started, the floor was packed with guys trying to get girls, effectively blocking everybody from doing any dancing or whatever. But as the group started to do their performance, all the guys suddenly left, and we found ourselves standing in the middle of a crowd of chicks, with hardly any guys around!

So we partied like crazy, but unfortunately none of us managed to “score.” Although Artem was doing pretty good with a girl we met their, who eventually took us to go and eat something afterwards. The place we went to eat was filled with drunken Japanese people, all enjoying their selves very much. The food kind of sucked though, and it was very expensive, but we had fun nonetheless. After dinner we took the metro home, where I quickly fell asleep. Time for the blind date!

At two o’ clock the next day I arrived at the starbucks where we were supposed to meet. I was a bit worried I wouldn’t make it in time, because I left my house kinda late that morning. Luckily, when I arrived at Shinjuku station I received a message from Saki-san that she took a wrong train and would arrive a bit later. So I quickly ate lunch at the starbucks, and when I finished she arrived.

Saki-san is a very sweet girl, who grew up in Kobe and is currently living with a friend just outside of Tokyo. Which meant that she didn’t have a clue on where to go either. She called a friend, and we decided to go to Shinjuku park. This is an awesome park, located about 10 minutes by foot from Shinjuku station. Inside they have a Japanese style garden, an English style garden and a French style garden. We walked around the Japanese part of the garden for over an hour, seeing some amazing sceneries, koi fish and an awesome Chinese building.

After the park, we went for some coffee near the station, were after a while we were joined by Seiko-san, after which we went for dinner and drinks. We went to an Izakaya, a Japanese restaurant where you simply order a lot of small dishes, which you share with everybody. Meanwhile you are basically drinking as much as you can take. It was very fun, and the food was great. I drank a traditional Japanese drink, which was quite strong, but very tasty!

After dinner, we met up at Shibuya station with another friend of Saki-san, Maki-san (do you still follow?) and a friend from my guest house, Swaroop. After a lot of walking around, trying to decide where to go next, until Swaroop led us to the hub. The hub is an English styled pub which was very fun. It was interesting to see though, that you couldn’t just sit down wherever you wanted, you had to be seated by the waiters, or keep on standing around.

After the hub, we missed the last train for Roppongi, so we didn’t go clubbing. Instead we went for something to eat and drink some more. We hung out with the girls until about 3.30 in the morning, when we decided to call it a night. We went outside and walked straight into a blizzard (well almost, it was snowing), and took a cab home. The next day I woke up quite late, to find a nice white view outside my window, and the sounds of children playing in the snow.