Last Thursday it was time for another Queensday! Queensday may be Hollands most favorite holiday. Everybody goes out, most dressed in orange (our national color), and parties, strolls around the city, visits the flea markets which take place everywhere, or just chills. All in all, it’s a great day!

This year, however, some idiot decided it was a good idea to drive through the crowd with his car and try and hit the royal family (which were parading in an open bus at the time). Fortunately he didn’t succeed in hitting the royal family, however, he did hit various people in the crowd along the way. Several people were heavily injured or deceased from the impact. The driver didn’t survive himself, so figuring out why he did what he did is up to the experts I guess.

As a result, lots of festivities around the country were canceled or toned down. In Amsterdam, our mayor decided that all parties should continue as planned, except for the largest party taking place at Museumplein every year (about 80.000 people attending), that one was ended earlier than normal after which the people slowly made their way home.

Me and my friends went to celebrate the queen lived! And ended up partying at the europarking lot near Elandsgracht. There was an excellent techno party going on there which was very fun, though a little bit crowded. Afterward we strolled down to the Westerstraat where we were mainly busy trying to find other people, after which we had some dinner in a local snackbar. Some of us went to Stevens after party, but I decided against it (since Steven lives on the exact opposite of town) and went home instead.

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Although the start of the day was a bit whack, it turned out to be a very nice Queensday after all and me and my friends had a blast!

Last weekend one of my friends from Tokyo, Chie, visited me in Amsterdam! She has been studying French in France for a couple of months and was about to go back to Japan. However, not before visiting me in Amsterdam. I already told her she could always stay at my place any time she wanted and she finally decided to take me up on my offer.

She arrived Friday evening around 11 PM, upon which we went back to my place to drop off her stuff before heading into town. We first met up with Maarten (whom she met in Tokyo at my sayonara party) in café Smoes near Leidseplein.

Having had our first couple of beers there, it was time to go clubbing, so we wandered off toward Studio80 for some minimal techno and goa trance (surprisingly good combination). There we met up with Renato, Marck and Roobin, who arrived there just before us. The party was great as usual and we partied till about 5.30 AM.

Saturday we woke up relatively early (noonish), because I of course had to show Chie around this nice little place of ours. We walked around town for hours, showing her various aspects of Amsterdam. We started off at the flower market, where she bought some tulip bulbs and small souvenirs. After the market, we wandered past Rembrandtplein to the Utrechtsestraat where we had lunch in Stacey’s Pennywell (seriously, go have lunch there, it rocks!).

After lunch we walked on to Waterlooplein to see the ever present flee market in action. Then we slowly made our way back to Dam square, followed by our final tour area, the red light district. At first, Chie wasn’t really impressed by it, just some stripclubs and sex stores, so far so good. Then we rounded a corner and entered one of the smaller alleys where the prostitutes are actually standing in the pink lit windows “selling their goods.”

Because we were talking about all sorts of things, Chie didn’t notice at first. However, once I pointed out one of the women (standing in a window at arms distance), she was downright shocked at the blatant display of women in the streets. It felt a bit like a pet store to her with all the women displayed like that. The shock was complete when she noticed a man leaving one of the rooms, “did he…”, “yes he did…”

After this shocking end of the afternoon, I took her safely home, where we had a typical Dutch dinner (well sort of), “gourmetten.” Which is a nice way to eat, grilling loads and loads of meat at the dinner table. We fell asleep watching a movie, but woke up in time to go clubbing yet again! Oh yeah, since I cooked most of dinner, Chie insisted on doing the dishes. Who am I to say no to that? :p

We went to ClubUp and De Kring near Leidseplein, where we partied the night away again. At first the party was a bit weird, with old slow dance music playing. Fun for maybe one or two songs, but after 30 minutes it started to get a bit old. So we just drank ourselves silly while making fun of everything we could come up with.

Once we were free to switch between party areas, though, the party kicked into full gear. Maarten joined us again, and we danced the night away.

Slightly groggy from the whole party weekend, I escorted Chie back to the station on Sunday morning and she headed safely back to France.

Chie, it was very fun showing you around Amsterdam! Feel free to come back any time. Domo Arigatou Gozaimashita.

You can check out my pictures at the gallery section. Chie’s pictures will follow once I have them.

… It was a blast!

What an amazingly wicked New Years Eve. We went to a Sexy Superheroes themed party, organized by Robin and Ralf. After helping with their preparations a bit on the Monday before, it was finally time to go out there and party like it was 2009!

Upon entering the party area, it became immediately clear, this was going to be one of those amazing nights, you’ll want to remember forever. Everybody was dressed up so great! From power puff cousins to Link, V for Vendetta to Opel Manta Man (??).

Everybody was in the party mood from the start and the evening set off rocking to the beats provided by the first dj. As it started to reach midnight, everybody was ushered outside to witness the fireworks and the huge bonfire, which swayed quite disturbingly, but it all worked out.

After midnight, the party kicked into full gear with more people coming in every second (or so it seemed). With two party areas, everybody was partying everywhere! We mostly hung out at the smaller area, where Jasper was playing funky elektro tunes just after midnight, followed by Vincent with an excellent drum n bass set. In the main area the beats where provided by Nicole and Niels. There were two more djs following them, but unfortunately I don’t know their names, sorry!

After Vincents drum n bass set, Renato Fleur and I took a shift serving drinks to the masses, which was very fun. After that, the night got a bit blurry and I just wandered around the place until I could hardly stand anymore and headed for the safety of home.

Oh, did I mention, the booze was free! For only 20 euro per person, Robin and Ralf managed to throw the best, most fun, amazingly wicked New Years Eve party I’ve seen in a long time. What will be next years theme guys?

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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 .