After being in Japan for over four months without any haircut, it was about time to go out and fix that. Monday was the day of days, my first time at a Japanese hairdresser. Of course I choose the place with the most cute girls and wow, what an experience.

At first everybody was a bit nervous about the gaijin walking into the place, but as soon as they figured out I could speak Japanese (a little) everybody was fine. First up, registering for a customercard, because just getting a haircut doesn’t work, obviously.

Having filled in my card, it was time for the first course of the treatment, shampoo! Nothing strange about that, however, it was the first time I got shampooed twice. Or maybe I should just wash my hair more often?

The haircut itself was very nice, the girl was skilled, and chattered away in a nice soft voice while fixing my hair. I told her about Holland, and of course she wanted to go after my extended explanations.

After my cut, it was time for… shampoo again!? While getting my third shampoo, they asked me if I would like a head massage as well. So there I was, at the hairdresser, being treated to a nice massage to booth. After the third shampooing, my hairdresser made the final (deciding) tweaks to my hair, and gave me yet another head massage.

When it was time to pay my bill, I got a final nice surprise: a 1000 Yen discount on the haircut (I have no idea why, but I like it!). Japanese hairdressers, quite the experience. Just before I leave, I’ll definitely go again.

As part of my catching up on my adventures, it is time to detail the geekiest thing I’ve done so far. From the 27th till the 30th of March it was time for the yearly Anime Fair at Tokyo Big Site. Here you find the latest and hottest info about all things related to anime. However, it also features a museum area showing off classic pieces of art and original anime drawings. Besides that, there’s exclusive interviews, shows and viewings with all your favorite stars.

But mostly, it’s a place where the geeks come out. I have never seen so many otaku walking around, drooling over the hot cosplay chicks, their oversized camera’s ready to shoot dozens of pictures from every angle of each girl they encounter. The girls were of course happy to pose for them (getting payed for it and all), but it still felt a bit weird. Although, of course, I too took several pictures of the girls walking around. I just stuck with one picture of each girl though, no need to go nuts. Luckily, I also ran into very sweet moments, like this small girl posing with one the fluffiest cosplays of them all (who knows which character that is btw?).

I went with my friend Paolo, who lives in my previous guesthouse and is a huge anime fan. We walked around for hours, taking pictures with our favorite characters, looking at the art, movies and statues…

But who am I kidding, you only want to see the chicks right? Here goes!

You can find more in the sekai section of the picture gallery. However, I can’t let you leave without showing my favorite two girls!

In my dojo I quickly became friends with Tosh. Tosh is a professional director, who spent about 10 years in the US to learn the tricks of the trade. Currently he is back in Japan and very busy working on a very cool and ambitious project: mustlovejapan.com. Mustlovejapan.com is a tourist information website, showing video reports of major and minor tourist locations.

However, although Tosh’s English is very good, it is not perfect, so he was looking for a presenter for these videos who can speak English fluently. That’s were I came in! As of last Sunday I’m officially the new presenter for mustlovejapan.com. Sunday we did our first shoot, and although I obviously still have to polish my presenter skills, it was very fun to do and the video turned out great! Just go to the site and find “Enoshima Summarized” to watch it.

These next two months we’re gonna shoot as much footage as we possibly can, which is a win-win situation for the both of us. Tosh get’s to fill his mustlovejapan.com with more and more content, while I get to see all the interesting spots in and around Tokyo, with Tosh as my guide! And of course excellent videos to look back at my great time in Japan once I’m back in Holland.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even become famous… When will I get my internet money!?

On a final note, while walking around, we spotted a fisherman… However the location he was fishing at seemed impossible. We searched around for about 10 minutes, but could find NO WAY to get to where that man was standing. In order to get there, he’d have to cross either crazy currents, or he’d have to climb down a rocky side. Both options seemed unfeasible for a man that age. Any thoughts on this mistery?

As of Friday the 25th of April, I am no longer in school. After four months of studying my ass of, it is about time I start relaxing a bit and see some more of Japan than just my school. I’ve learned a lot the past few months, and am by now able to have a simple conversation in Japanese. Of course full fledged discussions about politics are still quite far away, but at least I can have “pub conversations”. Now I’ll start focusing more on learning the kanji and extending my vocabulary in my own time.

However, before all of that, it was of course time to paaarty. I invited all my classmates for dinner in Shibuya and fortunately most were able to make it.

After dinner we quickly went for nomihoudai karaoke, to get the night started. Boy, did we succeed with that…

Since some of us had to catch last trains home, and others weren’t able to walk anymore, we decided to go find ourselves another place to continue the festivities. We found a small izakaya/bar kind of place, where we quickly continued our binge drinking. After about half an hour we were joined by Michel and his colleagues.

We were drinking so merrily, that after a while the waiter had to inform us that unfortunately they were out of draft beer. No worries, we just switched to Sapporo beer bottles! Until after a while they also ran out of those… So I can finally proudly proclaim we managed to finish all the beer in a bar!

As the bar was out of beer, it was time to go clubbing. We decided to go to Pure, because Mimmi had informed us that they had nomihoudai clubbing there. I must be honest, I don’t remember much of the club, other than the club itself isn’t very special. But being with a fun group, and having all you can drink helped a lot. I found a lot of pictures of which I had no recollection whatsoever taking them though…

Thanks everybody, for a wonderful time at school and of course an excellent party!