So what have I been doing since I stopped school? Partying of course! First up: Playstation 3 at Michel’s (on his Beamy!), followed by Hiphop and Ramen in Shibuya.

Next up: Mimmi’s birthdayparty. Of course we started out with nomihoudai karaoke. Although the girls hogged the mic, so we didn’t get to sing much, it did set the tone for the rest of the evening (partaaaaay).

After the karaoke it was time for some more nomihoudai pleasure over at Pure. It does have a magical attraction, all you can drink clubs…

The next day, it was finally time to play some poker. Robin, Michel, Tosh, Chie and Mike (fellow resident) joined, so we had a nice 6 headed game. Needless to say, their Japanese genes kicked in, so Tosh and Chie cleaned us out the second tourney.

Last Friday, I met up with Robin to chill a bit. We weren’t gonna go out, since we were both very tired and had plans for Saturday. However, after a while we started investigating the neighborhood a bit, and stumbled upon a tiny bar somewhere near Robin’s house. The old Japanese people inside were very surprised to see two young gaijin standing in the door, and at first the owner lady shouted to us that if we didn’t speak Japanese, we couldn’t enter. Needless to say, we entered the place, showing off our “best” Japanese. We had to sing some karaoke on a classic Laser Disc karaoke set, and impressed everybody there by actually singing some old Japanese songs…

Saturday I set out to buy a new shirt. Robin joined me, as he wanted to look for some records for his DJ set that night. We walked around Harajuku and Shibuya all day. I found a nice polo, I even bought my first CD in years! An excellent minimal techno album by Akiko Kiyama. After shopping all day, we both went to our homes to prepare for the night, since Robin was supposed to do his DJ thing in a small club a couple of stations from Shibuya.

I got home, freshened up, ate some and left around 9 to meet up with Robin in Iidabashi. Got on the train, and just as the train left the station, I got a call from Robin. “Funny thing… my gig is next week!” So no DJing for Robin that night, which also meant, no plans for the evening anymore. We decided to meet up in Shinjuku and decide what the correct course of action would be that night.

We were joined by Frederico, an Italian dude who used to live at Robin’s guesthouse, and Aki, Frederico’s girlfriend. We first went for drinks in some small backstreets near the station. However, we choose some place, where we were only allowed to stay if we would keep on eating. Just drinking turned out to be impossible, and we were rudely requested to leave the place.

So now we had to find a new place. We walked around Shinjuku for about half an hour looking for an interesting place to go, when we actually stumbled into the “Golden Gai” area. I hadn’t heard of the place before, but when you enter the area, it immediately radiates Japan all over you. The small streets are filled with tiny bars (if you can fit 10 people inside, it’s big) and the whole area feels entirely different than the rest of the city.

We stumbled out of the place around 2, only to take a cab to Shibuya to keep up our party efforts. We decided to go for cheap and ended up in, you guessed it, pure! There, I met a nice Japanese girl, Midori, who was being closely monitored by her friends and little brother. However, I did manage to get her phone number, so I hope I’ll get to meet her again (will keep you posted on that one).

Anybody curious about how my date with the Brazilian girl went? Currently I’m trying to stay awake to catch my train and head off toward Hokkaido (the Northern region of Japan) , so I just as well update my blog a little. However, writing a full fledged story is a little bit hard in my current state. So I’ll just stick with the basics:

Karaoke rocks!!!

This is what karaoke was meant for, go Robin!

Today I’m off to Hokkaido and will finally take some time off everything. I’m leaving my laptop behind in Tokyo, so I won’t work, I am going alone, so I won’t be obliged to do anything for anybody, and I have got some study books with me, to finally catch up with my Japanese language course!

I am gonna check out the quieter side of Japan; Onsen (hotsprings), National parks and temples, that’s what it’s gonna be (probably).

mata ne!

After my previous little cliffhanger, it is time for a full fledged update. But first a small explanation of what the video was all about. We were going out in Shinjuku, nothing special, just some food and drinks, when we decided to meet up with Chie, who was having dinner with a colleague near us. We were waiting for her, to come and pick us up, when suddenly we heard some commotion across the street. This turned out to be a very drunk “salary man” running around with his pants on his heels. I grabbed my camera, but while I got it, he pulled up his pants. Of course we couldn’t let him pass just like that. And hence we got his attention, and a cinematographic classic was born.

After this nice little distraction, we met up with Chie, and went to the Izakaya where her friend was waiting. We had drinks and food at the Izakaya , after which we of course went for karaoke. We were all quite drunk, so it was awesome and I finally got to sing “If I can dream” by Elvis!

The next day it was time for Igrushka’s final concert. With Artem going home, this unfortunately means the end of this nice little band. They will search for a new drummer, but will probably continue with a different name when they find one. The show was excellent, their best show so far, very sad though, that it was their last. Luckily this didn’t destroy our mood, since soon after their show ended, we were treated with the appearance of the next band.

About this next band, what do you think about the singer?

A: She’s a hot chick
B: She’s a lolita goth chick
C: She’s a visual kei dude

Let’s just say, it ain’t A, which I became painfully aware of, when (s)he started to sing… Visual kei is basically trash metal, where the band members dress up as extravagantly as possible. Everything is good, as long as it looks impressive. Another example of visual kei, a bit closer to home is the singer of Tokyo Hotel. Anyway, although their music was not good at all, the show they gave was very funny and entertaining, and gave us plenty of opportunity to throw around Yuji, Artem and myself!

After the visual kei show, we were treated to the sweet jamming tunes of gypsyconnection. These guys really know how to create smooth music. I ended up sitting in the middle of the dance floor, chilling to their groovy tunes. They even had a sing along tune, with the magical chorus: “kiko kiko, rin rin,” which comes down to, I’m cycling around, ringing my bell to pretty girls (go Japanese language).

After the shows, we went with Igrushka to an Izakaya to drink and eat all night long. It was very cool. We drank and ate a lot, like is usual in Japan. After a while Naofumi and Miki fell asleep, but Yuji and Nao held strong. Until we started playing drinking games (“One woman… got fucked… up the ass… whoohoo. Two women… two women… got fucked… got fucked… ah well you get it… whoohoo!), that quickly got Nao wasted as well, Yuji held strong though. Nao, Miki and Naofumi went to wait for first train in a manga cafe, while Artem, Kelly, Yuji and me stayed at the Izakaya.

Hold up, did I just say Kelly? Oh yes I did, Kelly used to be a colleague (or was it superior?) of Artem at the Gabba language institute. She an Australian girl who came to Japan to work as a study counselor thingy for Japanese people applying to learn English. We had a lot of fun, and she even renamed everyone of us (Hi, my name is Ben).

The next week was filled with school and aikijujutsu. Of course it was heavy eating and drinking with sensei afterwards, so the week was quite wrecking, but lots of fun! That Friday we had a special event at school. They had organized a speech contest. The higher classes had to write a small essay as part of their course, and the best writers/speakers of each class got to compete in this contest. Every contestant was introduced by his or her classmates in the most creative of ways. It was very funny to see, although we couldn’t understand a lot of it yet.

On Saturday I wanted to go to a drum n bass party in Womb, one of the hottest clubs in Shibuya. So I contacted the usual suspects and we met for drinks in Shibuya. We went to the cheap bar, where they serve pints for just 300 Yen (~2 Euro), and started with the binge drinking to get in the mood. Unfortunately people started bailing out at that point, Artem didn’t have any money, Joy went home early, and so on and so on. So I ended up with just Swaroop and some weird Korean dude.

While we were drinking, Swaroop suddenly got his glass filled by a dude who gave him some strong Japanese liquor. He kept on filling everybody’s glasses with it, but fortunately I had just ordered myself a beer, so I got spared. After a while, it turned out the guy had stolen the bottle he was using to fill our glasses. Of course the bar personnel found out and got really really mad (duh), at which point he just bolted and left the place.

Because of that incident though, we started talking to a group of girls standing near us. I started talking with a Brazilian girl, Marcia, and Swaroop managed to establish contact with a French girl, whose name I do not know. They were there with a Japanese girl, a Japanese guy and a French guy. All of them were very fun, and since it was quite late already, we decided to skip Womb and join them for another party.

The other party became Gaspanic. Gaspanic is comparable to Amsterdamned and such places in Amsterdam, although the music is mostly hip hop. It is a chain with Gaspanic places everywhere around Tokyo, and usually the drunk American marines hang out there, molesting Japanese girls. This time though, it was very fun, and there were now obnoxious Americans to be found.

Of course we drank a lot, and I ended up dancing quite a bit with Marcia. Damn those Brazilians can move! I am fairly confident about my dancing skills (taking into account I’m a white guy ), but damn, at several points I simply had no clue what to do with this twirling and grinding chick in front of me. Quite the experience!

We exchanged phone numbers and went for a lunch date last Saturday, but that’s a story for another day…

… 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!

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?