The day has come, I’ve sung my last karaoke, had my last roppokai training, drank my last sake, there’s no way out anymore. I’m going back home! Truth is, I really don’t wanna leave Japan at this moment, but, at this point, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Fortunately I don’t have to go straight home. First I’ll be in Beijing for a week. Then I’ll go to Rome, where I’ll probably meet up with Dennis and Marck. After Rome, I’ll head to Sicily to stay with Renato and his parents at their summerhouse.

I’ll be back in Amsterdam on the 2nd of August, so note that date, because I’ll definately wanna meet you that evening! Let’s party to celebrate Beanys return to Amsterdizzle!

After coming home, I’ll decide on what I’m gonna do from that moment on. Either stay in Holland and work there, or go to Japan and see what it is like to be a true salary man!

I’m currently in the midst of packing up my stuff and doing all the last minute things that always seem to pop up just before leaving the country. One of those is continuing V’s visit. So here goes!

After the impressive day in Hiroshima, it was time to go and see what the night life is like in Osaka. In advance we heard that there were some nice sights for sightseeing, but the main attraction was Osaka’s party scene. And party we did! We entered a club, karma, where they had a sort of Indie rock night.

As soon as we entered the place, it was quite obvious we were litterally the only gaijin present. Within 5 minutes, everybody in the club knew we were here, and we quickly turned into some kind of attraction, with some people even staring! Funniest was one girl, who, as I grabbed my beer, touched my hand with here finger as if to feel wether or not I was real. When I responded to that, she just giggled and bolted after a short while. We partied like crazy in there and V even managed to make some new friends. Although they couldn’t speak a word together, the power of party overcame that!

The day after, we did… nothing! Being all hungover (gee, how did that happen), we just slept till about 5, only to leave the hotel for dinner and a quick gaming session in one of the arcades. It was time to get nice and rested for Kyoto, where we went on Monday.

In Kyoto we spend the first day walking around visiting two temples. One of which, I had already visited with my mum, but it was nice to see the it again.

We didn’t realize, you should “keep off the person concerned only” by the way, that’s Buddhist wisdom for ya…

At night, we went into town to see what was going on there. As it turned out, not much, but we did find an excellent spot by the river, so we sat there for hours talking and chugging down some cold ones.

On our way back to the hotel, we ran into all kinds of interesting scenes, like a sleeping homeless and funny statues.

After the nice and relaxing night at the river, it was time to spend another nice and relaxing day at another river. You guessed it, back to monkey mountain! Last time I visited the mountain and excellent river with my mum, but we kind of arrived a bit late, so we had to rush through it. This time, I was prepared, and we arrived in the middle of the day, with plenty of time to see anything we wanted to see. Luckily, the river was just as impressive as before.

After having chilled at the riverbank a bit, it was time to climb up to see some monkeys (and again… not spank them).

After heading back down the mountain, we strolled along both of the riverbanks for a while, feeling all serene and peaceful…

One thing that caught our attention though, were the old guys, paddling around in their boat, holing a bunch of birds with them. At first we had no idea why they used the birds (propulsion?), but as we watched closely, we realized they were used for fishing. The birds were tied by the neck, but still had enough space to dive for fish. Every time, one of them caught a fish, the fisherman would string the bird and, and remove the fish from it’s beak. Only to throw the bird back out there after taking his precious catch. Pretty wicked way to fish I must say.

We went for dinner at the same Italian restaurant I ate with my mum before. However, this time we had a daytime view of Kyoto, since we went for dinner early. After dinner, we got on the shinkansen and headed back to good ol’ Tokyo.

So, it has been awfully quiet the past weeks hasn’t it? The reason is very simple: Vincent was visiting! So no time for blogging, but all the more time for sightseeing, partying and discussing every woman walking by in that beautiful secret language called Dutch!

The day V arrived, he was exhausted. Assuming he would be, I hadn’t planned anything special for that day, so we just went to an izakaya to eat dinner and drink a bit on his safe arrival. While eating and talking, the drinking a bit, turned into drinking quite a lot and after leaving the izakaya nice and drunk, we decided it was time to get more f#cked up and headed for a pub. Along the way, we bumped into some random Japanese people, so we joined them, until they ran off to catch their last trains. We left shortly after that and returned back to my guesthouse to play some Naruto on my Nintendo Wii! We played until about 4 in the morning, which we totally regretted when we woke up the next day, but still, it was very fun!

That day, Monday, I took Vincent to yoyogi park, where we chilled a bit and slowly got rid of our hangovers. After hanging out at the park, we went shopping a bit in Harajuku. Since Vincent really wanted a Billionaire Boys Club t-shirt, I took him to the store, where he bought one, that turned out to be slightly too small. But still, nice incentive to loose some weight, huh!? (OOOOOWwww)

That evening, I had a training session planned in the “open dojo”  with Tosh and Mariko. I took along Vincent and Ramiro (a Dutch guy living in the same guesthouse). It was very fun to show some of the roppokai aikijujutsu moves to V and Ramiro. For me it was even more fun to see how someone who isn’t trained in aikido or aikijujutsu reacts to the move. While they don’t flip like we do, the moves do work, and totally got them off balance. Especially Ramiro’s reactions were fun to see, total surprise every time he somehow ended up either on the floor, or totally off balance. Check my move btw!

The next day, it was time for our first true trip. Tosh took us by car to Mount Fuji! Revered by all Japanese, this mountain was on my to-do list for a long time, but I just hadn’t come around to visiting it yet. We left around 9 in the morning (would’ve been 8, but Tosh ran into heavy traffic…) for the three hour drive to Fujisan, as it is called in Japanese.

When we got there after a 3 hours drive,  we couldn’t see a thing… Somehow, it was very cloudy that day, and the ENTIRE freakin mountain was covered in clouds, hiding every last part of it from view. Tosh was very disappointed and impressed at the same time, “how can something so big just disappear!?”

However, when we drove up to the halfway point, fuji gogome, we were able to catch a glimpse of the peak. We walked around gogome a bit, venturing a small way up the mountain, where we quickly discovered snow! So of course, boys will be boys, soon a snowball fight was in full effect.

After the fight, we walked around some more, before we decided to head back down the mountain to check out one of the lakes surrounding it, Lake Motosu-ko. Tosh took us to the actual spot where the Fujisan picture found on 1000 yen bills was taken. So that was quite fun to walk around and see for ourselves. We headed down to the lake, and enjoyed the view and silence for a while, before returning back to the hustle and bustle of the city.

On Wednesday I had to pick up my passport at the Chinese Embassy, since I applied for a Visa for my week’s stay in Beijing (I got it!). The Embassy is in Roppongi, so since we were there anyway, we decided to visit Roppongi Hills. This area has been designed as a work/living area for busy people. Large buildings, and modern statues fill the landscape here. The best is the 54 stories high building, which provides you with an excellent view of Tokyo!

After Roppongi Hills, we started preparing for our rail trip to Hiroshima, Osaka and Kyoto. We got our rail passes at Shinjuku station and headed back home to start packing for the 7 days of travel. After packing we watched some video and went to sleep early.

Thursday was the day to go to Hiroshima. We had a 5 hour train ride ahead of us anyway, so we knew we wouldn’t be doing any serious sightseeing on the first day anyway.Instead, once we arrived and were checked into our hotel safe and sound, we quickly headed into town to find us some food and drinks. Unfortunately, since it was Thursday, and raining on top of that, going out in Hiroshima proved a bit of a challenge. So around 2 we returned back to our hotel to catch some sleep.

When we woke up, we headed out for our main reason for coming to Hiroshima, the A bomb dome. This dome is the one building near the center of the blast that remained afterward.  The remains of the building have been preserved throughout the years, and will be preserved forever. It is a very impressive reminder of the horrible events that took place on that day.

However, what really got to us were the images found in the memorial museum, near the dome. Seeing the images of the impact, reading the stories of burned children somehow managing to get home, only to die there in the arms of their parents, and looking at the images of the horribly burned victims, it really left it’s impact. I truly hope, no nation will ever be so stupid as to use a weapon as horrific as this one.

However, being the down to earth Dutch guys that we are, we couldn’t help but feel a little bit uncomfortable with the purely victimized role Japan portrays here. Of course, the bomb was horrible, but let’s not forget Japan wasn’t exactly known for it’s gentle tactics either. It was an all out war and all sides committed horrible acts in the process. It would’ve been nice to see some of that back at an exhibition like this as well. Nonetheless, it was a very impressive museum, which finally managed to truly shut us up for a while (which, by itself, is already quite a feat I must say).

After the atomic bomb memorial site, we went to see the Hiroshima castle. Obviously, the castle is a replica of the original. Inside is a museum, and surrounding it is a nice park, with all kinds of reminders of the event, like statues and foundations of former military buildings. Although still ok to look at, it’s obviously not as impressive as the A bomb dome and surroundings.

At night we tried to find a nice place to party again (it being Friday and all), but unfortunately because of the heavy rain, all Japanese people were being boring apparently. Every place we entered was next to empty, so we were walking around kind of lost and confused about the absence of any good party. However, suddenly we heard some very promising music coming from some basement we passed. We decided to check it out and walked straight into a small techno party!

Did I say small? I meant, tiny!  Some 8 people inside, most of them being the djs spinning the records. The records they were spinning were excellent, however, and the second dj truly kicked ass. So we spent quite a while there dancing and chatting a bit with the few people hanging out there. Oh, and, nice hiding of the wires…

Next up, Osaka! But that’s a story for a next post .

Having seen enough of Tokyo for now, it was time to start our journey to Kyoto, Japan’s former capital city. Kyoto is best known for it’s enormous amount of temples and shrines. This, naturally, makes it an excellent city to show your mum the “spiritual” side of Japan. Mum brought JR passes with her, so we could travel there for free by shinkansen.

From Tokyo to Kyoto it’s about 3 hours by train, so we arrived fairly in time to be able to check out one of the temples near our hotel, Higashi Hongan-ji. This absolutely massive temple can be found near Kyoto station, and was very impressive by its sheer size. Although the main part is currently being restored, it was still a very impressive site to walk around. Especially the ropes made out of human hair (donated by believers to create the ropes used to hoist all materials for the original temple) kinda stuck with me…

The next day we decided to explore the Southern part of Kyoto first. Here, we ran into our first group of school kids, exploring the sites on a school trip. On such trips they get all kinds of assignments, one of them being to talk to foreign people. So there I was, answering them questions like “what’s your favorite food?” and “what kind of sports do you like?”

After the interview, we entered the shrine, which had a magnificent garden with it. While walking around in the garden, we found an upwards path, which led us to an area with a great view over Kyoto.

After leaving this one, we quickly continued on to the next. This shrine was a lot bigger, and more tourist infected than the previous, but the garden surrounding it was truly amazing.

We wandered around there for a long time, exploring every part of it, until we finally reached the superb bridge near the exit. If anything, it was the perfect Japanese scenery, straight from the movies.

Oh, and little did I know, my mum is a tree-hugger!

The last shrine we visited that day was complemented with a beautiful park area behind it. We had the feeling the shrine would be very nice to visit in the dark, so we explored the park and the surrounding areas of the shrine a bit, while waiting for night to fall.

Luckily, we were right! The shrine looked very nice at night.

Next up, was the royal palace. The palace is pretty much in the center of Kyoto, with a huge park around it. The park itself wasn’t very impressive (especially compared to the parks and gardens the other day), but it does seem like a park that’s more used by the locals. There were people hanging out, children playing, joggers, etcetera. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to go into the palace on our own, but had to join a guided tour. So we joined the herd, and were led around in about an hour.

After the tour, we went to the West side of Kyoto. No, we did not find ghetto there, we did find an excellent river and mountain area though!

We had seen on the map, that somewhere around there should be monkeys. So we went up the mountain in order to check them out. Unfortunately, the climb proved a bit too much for my mum, so I went up the mountain alone. Where I not only found the monkeys (no, I didn’t spank them), but a magnificent city view as well.

After the monkey mountain, we walked around in the river area for about an hour. Unfortunately, my memory card was full at that time, so I couldn’t take any pictures anymore. So you’ll just have to take my word for it, that it was an excellent walk, with some amazing views along the way. After getting back at the hotel, we quickly searched for a camera store, so I could buy a new memory card. After getting the new (8 GB!!) card, we had dinner in an Italian (style) restaurant, on the 11th floor of the station mall. Needless to say, the city view was amazing.

The next day, we traveled to Nara at a slow pace. Since we knew it was going to be our last city we’d visit and there weren’t that many sights to explore, we took our time. We arrived around 3 in the afternoon, checked into a hotel and started exploring the town a bit. While doing so, we quickly ran into the main attraction of the town (or at least the cutest), deer!

At that point I suddenly noticed a little red icon flashing on my camera, indicating it was about time to recharge the damn thing. Guess what I decided not to bring, because I was sure the battery would last the entire trip anyway… Luckily, we found a small camera store, where they provided a battery charge service. So I left my battery behind for charging, while we went back to the hotel to rest a bit. Two hours later I returned to pick up my recharged battery, which I of course had to test immediately…

No, the girl being cute had nothing to do with it, really! Anyway, the next day we spent exploring the temples and parks in Nara. Walking a lot up and down the mountain area surrounding the town. Running into deer everywhere.

All temples are very nice, but the main attraction is definitely the 16 meter high Buddha statue in the Todai-ji. This temple’s entrance is guarded by two huge statues. However, these guardians feel tiny in comparison to the huge Buddha inside.

As we entered the temple, we immediately noticed another typical Nara “sight,” school children! All running around, trying to complete all their assignments from their textbooks. This also meant we were constantly stopped in our tracks by groups of them, everybody asking us the same questions over and over (Holland, Ramen, Aikido, sure you can have my autograph). After a while, we started feeling like an attraction ourselves! But it was very fun to do, and we usually got nice reactions from the kids.

The last shrine we visited was very nice, and as it was located in the mountains, we had a great view over Nara there.

When we were on our way back, we stumbled upon a small garden, which looked very interesting. We entered the place, not really knowing what to expect, only to find the most idyllic garden yet. Postcard pictures all around…

We chilled in this garden for a long time, before we returned back to our hotel. Being all peaceful and serene from the garden, we were quickly kicked back into reality, when we entered a shrine’s central yard, which we needed to cross to get back. There were about a 100 school kids running around the place, and when they spotted us, it was a loud “GAIJIN” and they all came running for an autograph in their textbooks. Not being mean people, we ended up standing there, signing their books for almost half an hour. Now I know how a celebrity feels and I can imagine that if you have to deal with that day in day out, it gets a bit old .

The next day it was already Saturday. Since my mum flew back on Sunday, we had to return to Tokyo. So we hopped on the shinkansen again and traveled back to “good ol’ Tokyo.”

Back in Tokyo we had some excellent Sushi, and on Sunday morning I dropped my mum off at the airport.

Thanks for the visit mum, it was fun!

As stated earlier, my mum visited me in Japan last week. She arrived on Friday the 30th of May and went back home on Sunday the 8th of June. Which, of course, meant I had to show her everything I could in just 9 days.

We started off in Tokyo, where on the first day she rested a bit in the afternoon. Flying for 15 hours did leave it’s marks. After resting, it was time to introduce her to her first real Japanese food, Shabu Shabu! She also had to learn how to eat with chopsticks, so that was quite a funny sight for me to see. It has something endearing to see your mum trying her best and proudly showing every piece she managed to pick up successfully (usually dropping it in the process .

The next day it was raining heavily, but that didn’t stop us from visiting the Meiji Shrine near Harajuku station. It was a shame though, that I couldn’t show the cosplayers, because there weren’t any! Even kawaii fashionists stay inside when it rains. Although the shrine is a very nice site to walk around and admire, it wasn’t the main attraction of the day.

The main attraction was of course my training at my Japanese dojo, followed by the usual dinner and drinks with sensei! As soon as sensei heard mum was visiting, he immediately pulled out his agenda and settled the matter. The first Saturday I had to show the dojo and training to my mum. It was very fun and fortunately she was allowed to take pictures during practice, so I finally have some training pictures!

Sunday we went to Nikko, where a lot of beautiful sites can be found. Temples, shrines, nature, the works. We walked around the temples and shrines all day, climbing a lot of stairs while doing so. Luckily mum’s muscles held out, so we could reach every point we wanted with relative ease.

After wandering around the temples for too long, we missed our last bus back to the station. So we decided to look for a taxi stand somewhere in the area. Luckily, we didn’t find any and ended up walking back all the way to the station (about a 40 minutes walk). But what a walk it was! The scenery was excellent, especially when we reached the river, and found Nikko’s holy bridge.

We left Nikko around dawn, so we arrived back in Tokyo around 9. Needless to say, we were very hungry by then, so we immediately went for dinner. I decided to go for Yakiniku, where you can grill your own meat and vegetables. Little did we know that we would walk into some kind of party. A large group of Japanese youngsters were drinking heavily and, as quiet as Japanese are when sober, so loud they are when drunk. So mum got a good view of the “other” Japan. People sleeping in the restaurant, puking their guts out, shouting and singing aloud. It seemed like fun.

Luckily about halfway through our dinner, the party moved elsewhere and one half of the group carried the other half out of the restaurant. Mum being slightly in shock (but in a good way), we finished our dinner, after which I brought her back to the hotel. The next day we left for Kyoto and Nara, but for those adventures you’ll have to stay tuned…