Enoshima

This weekend I wanted a quiet weekend, so I took a solo-trip saturday to enoshima, a small Island near Kamakura, about 1.5 hours west of Tokyo... See below. Also included, two photo's of me for all my fans out there... :P (or my friends who are starting to forget what I look like)




The next day, sunday, Juan was here, a Spanish friend of mine who I know from Beijing and who now lives in Hong Kong. So I gave him the Tokyo express tour at a suicidal rate and schedule which was straining even for my (i hear infamous) standards and at the end of the day ate together with some of our JPP group at a way-over-the-top-but-still-heaps-of-fun-athough-i-would-never-admit-it-Ninja-restaurant, which was hid away in the narrow corridors of a dark ninja dungeon. Was good food, and the ninjas performed life-threatening tricks such as "pick a card any card" and "hold this elastic band oops now it's gone".

The Disney and Trash weekend

Although to some people "Disney" and "trash" are basically considered synonyms, Disney and I go back a long time and it was only a matter of time before I would break and go to Tokyo Disneyland. I found three other victims of whom two had never been in Disneyland (I was shocked). We stayed from 10.30 am until 10pm and ran through the park in the rain as raging lunatics to be able to do all the rides. We covered it all, from space mountain to the tea cups, which we did just before dinner and that was not a good idea (well maybe better than after dinner though).

The next day was gomi zero day. All of us had to show up in Harumi to pick garbage. The biggest challenge of it all was to, well, find the garbage. Luckily, whenever bored, we could enjoy ourselves with monstrueske-sized tangerines and also a swing, as shown on the photos. In the end we had a barbecue. We made one more stop somewhere near Yasukuni shrine to have our picture taken for the JPP alumni book and then I headed into the park and had a relaxing afternoon with in the background people walking their dogs and bunnies. Yes, bunnies.

the Rock and Baseball weekend

And quite a heavy weekend it was. A few months ago we met a couple, who were in a rockband in a small bar in Shinjuku. We promised them to once see one of their performances and we decided it was time to do so. They were one of the two acts of that evening in the Shibuya O-Crest. Ignorant as I am, I was unfamiliar with the obvious theme of the evening: ‘motor disco’. Not having heard their cd yet, I was curious what kind of pieces of musical art a band called “Boogie the machmohtaaz” would make.The answer was: very loud music. It was indeed a strangely interesting stream of music. The band played a genre somewhere between hardrock, boogie, disco and Daft Punk. Simultaneously, the leadsinger entertained us by doing funny dances in his golden suit and shouting boogie number one, while the girl in leather was the more serious type, to busy to smile as she was concentrating on striking the right chords on her keyboard. The third member of the band, the drummer, suddenly left his drum kit for what it was and frantically ran a few laps through the audience in order to knock over some tables, in effect victimizing several innocent beer bottles. The underlying meaning of this little outburst was a bit lost on me (and the rest of the audience for that matter).

It was fun, and I do think there was a moment that the crowd seemed to be on the verge of trying to go wild (although I could’t tell for sure, taking account of the fact of it being Japan and all: the audience didn’t dance a single step, shout a single word or do any other of those kinds of unacceptable things, only clapping when absolutely necessary in response to the band’s polite “arigato gozaimasu” after every hardrock song)Anyway, it was a fun evening, and the band was really nice to us. They happened to have been standing near the entrance of the club the show begun, and after recognizing Evelien and me, they let us in for free by putting us on the guest list. Afterwards we had another chat and she said she was relieved it was over because she had been very nervous for this gig. It was a great evening nevertheless. So, being happier and deafer than before, Sjors, Evelien and I left the club and after one more drink somewhere in Shibuya we headed on home.

Saturday afternoon was spent quietly at a photography museum and reading a Murakami book at Amber café. Fulfilled my craving for steak at Outback Steakhouse, (a favorite chain-restaurant for which my mother and I should deserve some kind of gold card as we have eaten there at many different locations across the world). We then left for Daikanyama, a neighbourhood closeby. After a drink in a wannabe-trendy yet merely depressingly sterile white bar, Koos, Rene, Sjors and I went to the samurai.fm party in club Unit were we stayed until 6 in the morning. I wasn’t too drunk, which was useful, as a certain neighbour of mine needed a bit of additional navigation to get home…:)

Next day we had a ball at the Tokyo dome. The drinks were taken care of by "beer-girls" wo were competing against each other for customers, running up and down the stairs with a complete beer tank strapped on their back....respect!
The Tokyo Yomiuri Giants baseball team beat the Hokkaido Nippon-ham Fighters. Go Giants!

Tokyo weekends

Tokyo weekends

Since most of my weekdays are spent gazing at a computer screen in utter apathy, weekends in Tokyo are precious. The last months have begun, and the number of weekends is getting less and less. You can notice that all of us are getting a bit edgy and maniacally planning each weekend.


The "BBQ weekend"

A Japanese friend of ours, Kosuke, invited a few of us for a barbecue at his house northwest of Tokyo. And what a barbeque it was. Good food, sunny weather, Jack Johnson and Bob Marley music, and Sandy, the laid-back house dog…the mood was set.
We ate non-stop from 2.30 pm to midnight, and I even roasted raw Brazillian coffee in a pan on the barbecue and grinded it by hand in the coffee mill - I’d guess it was about 100 turns for one cup. Bit less convenient than pressing the button of your Senseo/Nespresso-machine (the roasting and grinding in total took about 45 minutes).
Around midnight, Kosuke and Kosuke’s friends should have gone to sleep but no, without anyone noticing we somehow left the house and suddenly found ourself singing karaoke. Interesting differences in westerners and easterners singing karaoke I must say. While our japanese friends chose ballads and tried to sing as emotional and on-key as possible, we sang on a totally different level, the louder the better, with a sound-quality somewhere on the spectrum between a cow in labour and a cat being strangled.
After a while we though that it was taking quite a while already and that “the karaoke staff should have already told us that our time is up” when we realized we had rented it until morning so after singing until 3.30 we were knackered and stumbled to Kosuke’s house.

We were woken at 9.30 when it was announced to us that we were going to the onsen (hotsprings) nearby. Jolly good fun but a bit challenging to sit in hot baths and saunas with half a hangover and without breakfast. But it was really relaxing and Kosuke and us agreed we should set up an onsen in Holland, Japanese style. And, naturally you should also be able to do Karaoke while bubbling in the onsen.

In the afternoon we said goodbye to Kosuke and spent some time at the Sanja festival in Asakusa, one of Tokyo's biggest festivals. Then, I went home and fell into a deep sleep.

Travelling japan

The pictures in the last post were made while my mother was visiting in Japan end of april and beginning of may. We had such a great time, both in tokyo, and on the road. Walking around the old shops of Takayama, seeing temples and crowds in Kyoto, the beach, samurai houses and friendly temple owners of Hagi, the breath-taking Atomic bomb dome and thousands of paper cranes of Hiroshima and the straying deer and most famous japanese shinto-gate at Miyajima.Too much to describe, but a picture says a thousand words they say. Luckily I made no less than 1500 pictures that week....

Quakes and more Flowers

At 7 pm today, a quake 'hit' Tokyo
After verifying that it was not just due to plain 'windyness' from the schnitzel I had for lunch that caused me to move on my chair, I realized that I was experiencing the first quake I have felt in Tokyo so far. Several of my classmates already felt a quake once or twice (it can be very local), but I somehow kept 'missing' it. Although the news has even reported about it today, my life didn't exactly flash before my eyes; my table just moved a bit for a second and it was over (luckily). It was a 5 on the richter scale but in Tokyo it was a 2 since the epic center was somewhere else.

The theme this week was still sakura, as this week was 満開　'mankai', full bloom of sakura. This week was again filled with sakura experiences but I promise this is the last time I'll write about this crazy Japanese season.
This weekend, especially Saturday, I spent the whole day running around in Tokyo trying to catch as much sakura as possible, since in the future the weather might become cold and windy (a period called 花冷え、hanabie lit. flowers getting cold). Futhermore, during weekdays there is not much time due to the traineeship.
And thus, I raced through the city on Saturday, and first went to Ueno where the whole of Japan plus a hell of a lot of Chinese tourists seemed to have gathered with the same purpose. However, this is expected when going to popular Ueno and it actually contributed to the atmosphere. So, I walked along the crowds and enjoyed both the myriad food stalls and cherry blossom at the same time.

After a while, Vivian accompanied me and we went to our next stop: Sumida river, a famous spot for flower watching. Now on the riverside, things were a bit more relaxed than Ueno. At Sumida, there was more room for people to sit down on their blue tarpaulins and enjoy the flowers while having a beer. I refrained from doing this myself as I was more interested in seeing as much sakura-places in Tokyo to really get an idea of what is really going on during this season, and because my team at Canon promised to hold a hanami, a promise that has not been fulfilled yet and I wonder if they forgot.

After Sumida, Alexandra joined us and we headed out to a different part of the city, Yasukuni. At this controversial shrine, the atmosphere was absolutely amazing, with tables filled with people, food and beer under sakura trees as far as the eye could see, with music and dance and that late afternoon at Yasukuni now definitely belongs to the top 10 most 'gezellig' scenes that I have seen in the world so far.

Already nearing sakura-overdose, we crossed the street to find more sakura on the west side of the imperial palace, where a massive queue of at least a few kilometers existed. Even the Japanese where impressed. And if Japanese are impressed with the length of a queue, this must mean something. I asked why they were queuing and the answer was simple. Because the trees will light up. Ok, exciting as that seemed, we decided not to stand in queue for several hours in order to see those trees light up. Maybe some other year.

Afterwards we headed out to Roppongi to go to an evening festival, but due to misinformation it had already ended before we got there. So, we finally ended up in a pub for a beer or two with Stephan and Jojanneke, who where in the neighborhood, and called it a day.