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 .

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!

Last night we went partying in Roppongi. Roppongi is kinda the tourist area of Tokyo. There are a lot of gaijin (foreigners) partying here and naturally this attracts a lot of Japanese people (girls!) who want to meet them. We heard that Lex was the place to go for a good party, so on to Lex we went. At the door we were a bit taken back by the entree fee (4000 Yen, or 24 Euro), but we managed to make it 3000, and we got 3 drink coins as well. Since drinks were 1000 Yen each inside anyway, we basically prepaid for 3 drinks, so it was all good.

Inside we found an awesome party going on! Lots of people were dancing, chilling and the party vibe was very nice. Also, they played normal music! Not the mind numbing rave tunes we heard in atom. Another thing, in Roppongi the girls know how to move much better than in Shibuya. Thus it was a much better feast for our eyes…

Inside, I suddenly got hit on by a kind of shy Japanese girl. So, after Michel pointed that out to me, I started dancing and flirting with her. I thought it all went pretty ok, we were dancing and getting closer and closer (without the need to tickle! ). Then, suddenly, she turned away and started dancing with a Japanese dude. I was a bit confused, so I just went for a drink, and found Michel again. We partied some more, but then I bumped into the girl again. She immediately came to me and we danced like before. But again, when we got closer, she suddenly left, and went to the same guy again. Tuff luck, for her, because I then decided to ignore her for the rest of the night and started partying with three other girls, who were much nicer anyway.

Meanwhile, Michel wasn’t sitting still either, and he had met this pretty little girl who was really into him and two of her hot friends. So, suddenly, I got tapped on the shoulder, that we were going to another club. I was like, ok, let’s go and off we went. On to 99, which turned out to be a gangsta hiphop club, go shorty! The girls inside here were smoking hot! And all of them knew how to shake their booty, it was awesome! The two friends quickly took the stage, and Michel was enjoying himself with the other girl. And I was simply enjoying the view, and partying with everybody. It was awesome!

After 99, we went back to Lex to party some more there. Around 5.30 we decided it was time to go home, so we went for a bite to eat and walked towards Roppongi station. But then the most wicked thing happened. Right before our eyes, at a large crossing, a girl got run over by a truck! Seeing someone getting run over by a truck is a truly weird experience. At first, when you see it happening, you look at it like you would do to a movie, or a video game, it looks very surreal. For me, it looked like the girls body got taken over by ragdoll physics, as she got hit by the truck, and disappeared underneath it…

We both saw it at the same time, stood in shock for maybe a second, and then, as one, we both ran to the scene of the accident to see if she was ok and what we could do to help. Fortunately the girl was hit in the center of the truck, so she wasn’t run over by any of the wheels. So when we arrived, she was already trying to get up. We helped her, and quickly tried to find out if she had any serious injuries. It looked like she didn’t have any serious injuries, she’d just hit her head quite hard on the ground, but there wasn’t any blood or anything. She could have a concussion though, since we aren’t exactly doctors. The truck driver just stood there like “uhm, shall I call the police” (only in Japanese) and we were both like, “well duh! You just ran over a girl!”

The police quickly arrived, and immediately called for an ambulance. The girl was by that time completely overtaken by the realization of what had actually happened to her and was a trembling crying mess of misery. So, while the police was writing down her information, Michel and I did everything we could to comfort her. After a short while, the ambulance came and took her away. We gave our phone numbers, as we were witnesses. But I don’t think we’ll hear much from it again.

After this thrilling experience we quickly went home, and arrived at about 7 in the morning back at our place. Of course I quickly fell asleep after again a totally wicked night of partying in Tokyo!