I recently moved countries for a 2nd time in 2 years. Originally Dutch, I spent 2 years in London as a Professional Poker Player, but am now starting anew yet again as an Entrepreneur in Tokyo, Japan. Read about my Life in Japan, Trips throughout Asia, various Business Ventures, Amazing Food, Fitness and the occassional Poker Session and Movie Review.
Yesterday I met up with Chinatsu, a japanese girl I've practiced talking Japanese with on Skype over the past few months. First we went to Tokyo Sky Tree, which is the tallest building in Japan. Standing about ~630 meters tall. Construction was finished sometime this summer, so she hadn't had a chance to go there yet. The waiting line was a little long(~30 minutes), but it was worth the wait. I had expected it to be pretty high, but once we got up it even higher than expected. And the observatory decks were at only 350 and 450 meters. Not even 630!
I must've shot at least 50 pictures. Here's a small selection of them.
Afterwards we went to Shibuya, checked out Yoyogi park and went to her favorite cafe. My Japanese speaking skills are getting better aswell. At the start of the day I wasn't able to speak much Japanese, but towards the end I spoke quite a lot. I guess the more comfortable you get with someone the easier it gets, because you know the other person is okay with you taking longer to finish sentences. My listening comprehension is quite terrible though and I need to work on that a lot. Hopefully that'll also get a lot better in the coming weeks.
Don't expect daily updates throughout my holiday btw. It's just that for now I'm still waking up around 5AM and being on my own there's not much to do for the first few hours so I might aswell put some pictures online. It's 5:40 now and I'm getting hungry so I'll go see if I can fetch myself some breakfast now.
In a few hours I'll meet up with a dutch guy I know who lives in Tokyo. Although I'm not sure he still speaks dutch, because I always speak english with him :). I believe we're going to a temple and eat some lunch afterwards. Should be fun!
The tall building in the middle is the tall one on the right in the 2nd zoomed in picture.
The tall building just left of the middle behind the crane is the one on the very left in the 3rd zoomed in picture.
This picture is 42x zoom.
That's pretty much how big Tokyo is. Even on the 3rd 42x zoom picture there's buildings as far as the eye can see. Furthermore all of the buildings are flats or skyscrapers. This city is truly MASSIVE!!!
Yet I also think it's very spacious. Outside on the streets there's a lot of space and even a lot of trees in certain parts. The city's also filled with viaducts and in general the roads and streets are just beautiful. In general I have to say this is BY FAR the most beautiful city I've ever seen.
I had expected Tokyo to be crazy busy, but actually it's quieter than London. Maybe it's because there's more space, but overall I find the vibe very relaxed and it hasn't been busy at all so far. Maybe so far I've just seen the relatively quiet parts of the city centre though.
The plane ride was very good too. I was sitting inbetween 2 Japanese girls and I talked to one of them for at least 4 hours or so. Maybe 20-30 minutes in Japanese and then the rest in English. Her english was excellent, because she was married to an english guy and living in London. Furthermore I got 3 hours of sleep twice, which was amazing!!!
Food's been so-so so far. I've eaten at a 24hr place twice so far, because I had to eat breakfast before 7 AM twice. The first one was so-so, the 2nd one was excellent considering it only cost me 3 pounds. Hopefully the locals I'm meeting up with today and tomorrow can show me where to eat some good food.
Last but not least, I'm SUPER SUPER happy I've studied Japanese for ~6 months. With no or few Japanese skills I don't know how anyone could manage here. I had heard the subway system was easy to navigate for foreigners, but very complicated in my opinion. Think I have it somewhat figured out though now after 1 day and with my Japanese skills. Also google maps is a MUST!!!
Restaurants aren't any different. The places I've been to thusfar noone spoke any english. Luckily I managed, but still a little inconvenient.
Oh and it is definitely true that there's almost no foreigners in this country. I think the last non-Japanese person I saw was ~ 26 hours ago.
I'll start taking my camera with me starting today and hopefully take a lot more pictures of various things. I'm gonna go shower now and meet up with someone in 2.5 hours.
I thought I was busy during the last week of July, but this first week and a half of August were even way busier! First I had a couchsurfer stay with me. A guy from Japan. He was a little shy, but really nice and respectful. I hang out with him on thursday and friday he was away all day exploring London before leaving late in the evening. Overall it was allright, but not as much fun as I'd hoped. I'll give it at least 1 more shot, but based off of this experience not likely something I'll do regularly.
It should still prove to be a good resource to meet people when I'm in Japan though!
Speaking about Japan:
三十日九月から七日十一月まで日本でいます！！！
わ食しか食べません。まてませんよ！
とても楽しみにしています！
Translation:
From the 30th of September till the 7th of November I'll be in Japan!!!
I'll eat nothing but Japanese food. I can't wait!
I'm very excited!
I've already booked my flight and have started planning my trip. There's still lots of planning to do, but it should be absolutely EPIC =) Cannot wait!!!
{MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE DARK KNIGHT RISES}
Then on monday I got to see the Dark Knight Rises in the BFI IMAX. The first time I went there since they've installed the brand new screen. It seemed even bigger than before, although I'm not sure how that's even possible, because it already was BY FAR the largest movie screen I had ever seen.
The Dark Knight Rises was great overall, but I was also very disappointed after all the hype. I personally thought it was the worst of the trilogy although not by much. Especially the last 20-30 minutes had a little tóó much drama imo and could not break loose from many hollywood cliché. Especially the happy ending felt very forced to me and I think it'd have been much better and more logical had Batman died. Oh well... the trailer for the new Superman movie looked really fucking badass! :) And The Hobbit should still be able to save us from another year without any good Hollywood movies.
Then on monday evening I took the Eurostar to spend Tuesday and a large part of Wednesday with my mom and my younger brother in Paris. I'll just show you the pictures.
I think some sort of Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorial thing.
They had this awesome place set up where people could come and watch the Olympics. Funny I had to come to Paris to actually enjoy some of the games.
Italian food in Paris' pretty good.
{I actually saved this first part as a draft about 3-4 weeks ago, but then never finished it.}
Then as I got back to London St. Pancras International Train Station, my younger sister(Daphne) was there, because she was staying with me in London for 2 days. I don't think I took any pictures, but we had some good food, did some shopping and a tiny bit of sightseeing. A good amount of fun and I'm glad she got to see my apartment before her year at uni started.
After Daphne's visit I had about a week of rest, before another couchsurfer came over. This time Akiko and her younger brother, Masato, visited me. Most of the pictures were taken by Masato. When he sends them to me I'll post a few in my blog. We did a ton of sightseeing and I basically spent all 3 days hanging out with them. It was lots of fun and because Masato's english was about as limited as my Japanese, I was forced to speak a little bit of Japanese. I still need lots more practice, but it's still good for your confidence to actually say a few sentences and have them be understood by locals! =)
Akiko also made Japanese Pasta for me which was really nice and very tasty! Her english was also 100% fluent, so it was a lot easier and more fun to talk to her than my first couchsurfer. Overall lots of fun and something I may do again in the future afterall. And definitely something I'll want to do in Japan at least once.
The week after that was a bit more quiet again. Got some good workouts in and focussed heavily on poker. HU had not been working out too well over the course of the summer, so decided to switch back to playing 6m PLO. After 1 week of lots of bad luck and running ~20BIs under EV, the 2 weeks since then have been great. While I haven't run above EV, I've definitely been very fortunate. Picked up nearly 100BIs in the 3/6 ante games(with some 2/4 and 5/10 aswell) over the past 2 weeks. The variance in those games is INSANE, but they're very interesting, enjoyable and profitable of course.
The first weekend of September, Martijn aka 'MartyParty de racecoureur' as I put him into my phone a few years ago, came to London. He's a high school friend from Holland I've known for nearly 10 years. He has an internship in London until Christmas and he's staying with untill then. He's been extremely busy so far. Not only having to work hard for his internship, but having to prepare for an art exhibition/show next week aswell.
I also had a few noteworthy dinners this September. First of all I ate Okonomiyaki for the first time in my life at Abeno. It's a japanese style fried Pancake. I really liked the atmosphere in the restaurant and it was great, except for the fact that they recommended we split one with 3 people. We could've all eaten one fairly easily. Anyway, it was still a very fun dinner. Here's the pictures:
Then last sunday, we randomly walked into a decent looking Japanese restaurant, called Toku. They had very friendly staff and the starters were good. So we ordered 1 of each roll, so we could all share them and try every single one. This is where the good turned bad and then ugly!
Looks good, right?
That's what was left over... left over sushi? Yeah, pretty bad! None of us had ever not eaten sushi that we ordered, but these pieces of crap(can't even be called sushi) were just too sickening.
And here's the downright ugly! My friends were right for not wanting to try it simply based off of it's looks. I was like, "hey it's sushi, it's obviously good!!!", so I put the entire piece in my mouth in good faith. Well... that was a mistake. I had to gulp it away with soy sauce, that's how bad it tasted. Turned out this was a piece of sushi with melted cheese in it. GROSS!!!
There was another piece that tasted like the fish came from a tin can and a few others that were pretty pretty bad. Out of the 10 rolls I'd say 2-3 were edible, but fell in comparison to even most take-away sushi. About 5 were pretty bad and 2-3 were just simply gross. I don't know what the chef at this restaurant has been smoking, but I'm pretty sure he's never tasted his own sushi.
Since the last time I ate at McDonalds/Burger King about 5-6 years ago I've only eaten food worse than this on 1 occassion. That was at the infamous Garlic.
Ok I'm glad to have gotten that out of my system. Fortunately enough I also ate at Atari-Ya Swiss Cottage last week, with
Gavin and Olivia when checking out their new awesome house they bought
~a month ago and I will be making a return trip to Sushi Tetsu this
friday for most likely the best sushi of my life for a 2nd time.
I've also been extremely busy planning tons of things for my trip to Japan. In less than 2 weeks I'll be going to The Netherlands and then in less than 3 weeks I'll be in Japan. I've bought a Camera, backpack, booked more hotels, spent some time on couchsurfing, figured out how I will pay for things, bought tickets to the Studio Ghibli museum, bought a few Japanese Rail Passes and a bunch more stuff. I still have quite a few things to take care off like get an extended trip travel insurance from my bank and figure out a way to get Internet on my phone in Japan or at least a local SIM card to call with. May be hard, but hopefully I can figure out a way.
Last but not least I've watched a ton of new awesome movies I HAVE to mention! And a lot of not as awesome movies I won't bother mentioning. These are more or less ranked from worst to best, with worst being EPIC and best ones being in the top 10 movies I'll get to see this year. Here we go:
-Hotel Rwanda(2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/
I'm sure you all know about. If not go be ashamed and watch it!
-Ddongpari(2008) {Korean}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1373120/
EPIC Movie!!! Some of the best acting I've ever seen
combined with some of the best characters ever, make for a super intense movie.
Fucking Awesome! I'll need to see it at least once more
to figure it out. Lots of open questions and I just don't understand
all of it. But I understand enough to love it. As always lots of
humor from Shion Sono. And it seems like there's a lot of awesome
messages in there. As mentioned don't
quite understand them and need more watchings + more time to think
about this movie. Overall definitely epic. And the first 5 minutes are W I L D!!!
-Survive Style 5+(2004) {Japanese}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430651/ One of the funniest movies I've ever seen!!! Laughed throughout almost all of the
movie. At the end there was a part which I found a bit slow, but the
rest is just simply super super funny!!! Ending is superfeelgood awesome
too!! Just awesome!! Weird, completely totally different and above
all hilarious!!!
-Biyeolhan Geori(2006) {Korean}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0821442/ One
of the best gangster movies ever. Has to be either this or Chingoo.
Both WAY better than the Godfather movies. I loved the characters a
lot. The main character is especially well done, so interesting and
has so many sides. Is he a good or a bad guy? Tough question.
Probably bad, but he's so likeable. Just awesome movie overall. Very very enjoyable.
I saw this yesterday and obsolutely LOVED it! What else can I say besides Shion Sono is a movie making GENIOUS and well on it's way to being my favorite director of all time. This guy knows how to make movies.
This one's really funny, with great acting and a solid plot and some cool connections with the Tsunami that hit Japan shortly before this movie was made. HIGHLY recommend it.
-Tsumetai nettaigyo(2010) {Japanese}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632547/
The
first 2 hours or so are very good, but nothing really spectacular.
But then... but then. The last half hour consists of mostly ~5 scenes
that each individually on their own would be some of the most
ridiculous shit EVER in a movie.
Together............................................... WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!
First 2 hours while it's
quite good and contains many many hot girls, is not that outstanding.
Last half hour though is insanely awesome!!!
-Nae
Yeojachingureul Sogae Habnida(2004) {Korean}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409072/
TOTAL BADASS amongst movies!!! First
hour is perfect. The girl's
acting/character is out of this world and the chemistry between the 2
leads is amazing.
The 2nd half worked really well for me. At
some point I guess I just accepted that it wasn't supposed to be 100%
realistic. And I stopped caring about details. Nonetheless I felt
like some things just didn't come together quite as well as they
could've. And the ending is maybe a tad bit corny. I was still in tears though. Furthermore I have to mention the soundtrack. I'm pretty sure
I've heard it before somewhere, but it is EPIC!!!
Did I mention the girl in this movie is A M A Z I N G? Definitely my favorite actress.
Last but not least I made a list on IMDB containing all currently 611movies I've ever seen with their ratings and the best ones with a short description aswell:
www.imdb.com/rg/s/3/list/Q38S75UMrrM/
Ok that's about it. Lengthy update, but it's been a while so I had a lot to talk about. Maybe 1 more small update before I'm off to Japan. When I'm in Japan I'll try updating every now and then with some delicious sushi pictures or nice japanese scenery.
In the end I kept myself pretty busy during my scheduled restweek from fitness. I played frisbee in the park with Deldar and Terje, went out and had lunch/dinner with them a bunch of times and also played Tennis(Tommy was the 4th) and Squash. Tennis and Squash were loads of fun. I personally prefer Squash, but both are lots of fun. Friday I was finally able to go to the gym again and since then I've put in 5 workouts already. Breathing Squats phase. Awesome exercise, should be a fun 8 weeks.
I'm also going to Japan for sure now. I'll spend ~2 weeks there with my dad and then another 2-3 on my own. I'll be spending time in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Also on my Japan To Do List are go to a National Park(should be amazing in autumn) and visit an Onsen/Ryokan. An Onsen is basically a hot springs. Bathing houses and taking baths in general is extremely popular in Japan and a natural hot springs should be the best way to experience it. And obviously not to forgot eat shitloads of sushi!!!
I've also been looking for ways to get in touch with Japanese people during the 2nd half of my trip. I know 2-3 Japanese people on Skype through Mixxer(language exchange website) that I will meet up with while I'm there, but I've also found this website called couchsurfing.org. Basically it's a social networking website for people who love travelling to get in touch with eachother and potentially offer eachother a place to sleep. Seems like a useful resource so far.
I'm VERY MUCH looking forward to my trip and I CAN ABSOLUTELY NOT WAIT to go!!!
Poker's been going pretty well. Still getting more and more confident and recovering mental strength bit by bit. I believe I should be able to play a reasonable amount of hands again. Unfortunately enough I've just been far too busy to actually do so. All the Squash, Tennis, Dinners, Lunches, Japanese learning, Workouts etc etc have taken up a LOT of time. And next monday - wednesday I'm going to go to Paris with my mom and younger brother, so that's not gonna help me play more either(although it should be a lot of fun). I really want to buckle down and focus on poker and steadily progress again. Things just being so stagnant for 16 months now is really annoying. Especially since I'll be in Japan for ~a month too and once I get back I'll only have about half a year left before my lease ends and I'll have to decide what I wanna do with my living situation. I'm not sure at the moment what I want to do and I really want to make some progress again pokerwise before I have to make that decision. If I don't I'll most likely want to try and cut down on living expenses a little.
Hopefully I can start grinding a lot more sometime soon. I'll have to focus on spending my time efficiently(already do a good job at that) and probably also cut down on some activities a little bit. I've already decided I'm gonna mostly stop watching the GSL. While It's a ton of fun, I really really want to do my best and play a bit more poker.
Yesterday was pretty epic. FINALLY after a year and 3-4 months, I'll finally get my pretty big 5 figure sum back from Full Tilt Poker. Moreover a lot of friends will be getting their money back and in general it's just a great thing for the poker industry/economy to see this ugly matter resolved. Obviously we had some good sushi to celebrate this wonderful ocassion. We went back to Sakana Tei after having not been there for a few months. I even ordered something off of the special Japanese chalkboard menu! :) The delicious パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad). And I got a super special piece of prawn sashimi that they happened to have available that day. After I finished the meat, they added the remaining head to a miso soup, which added a very nice extra flavor. Likely the best Miso Soup I've ever had. Oh and we had Fatty Salmon for the first time ever. Not as good as Fatty Tuna, but a bit better than regular Salmon.
パリパリサラダ(Pari Pari Salad)
Special shrimp sashimi
My awesome nigiri order. Had almost forgotten how good Fatty Tuna tastes
Dave's order. Pretty legit imo
Vanessa's order. I guess it doesn't take much to please a vegetarian ;)
Tom only got the best of the best. But was unlucky, cause it turned out the Chu-Toro beat the O-Toro yesterday.
Best miso soup ever?
Last but not least, Martijn(dutch friend I've known since high school), has an internship in London from the 3rd of September - Christmas and I've decided to let him stay at my place during those 4 months. At first I was a bit hesitant, because 4 months is a long time and I quite like living alone. But after talking about it with my mom, I became convinced that the good should easily outweigh the bad. So I decided to let him stay and now I'm quite looking forward to it.
Almost forgot to list the new movies I've seen that I'd recommend others watch if they have a chance:
-こくはく(Confessions)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1590089/
Awesome Japanese movie. Thanks to the Japanese friend on skype who recommended this to me. It's a bit of a crazy and weird movie, but very interesting and refresing and very much worth watching. Especially the 1st 15 min are pretty wild.
-Ajeossi(The Man from Nowhere)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527788/
Awesome Korean movie. Thank you Nils for the recommendation!
It's an action movie, that's extremely well done. Kinda like The Chaser and even somewhat similar to the english movie Taken. Very much worth watching, it's hard not to like it.
-Salò o le 120 gionate di sodoma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/
This movie I actually HIGHLY recommend NOT watching. Nonetheless I have to tell you a little bit about it. On IMDB people say it's the most disturbing film you'll ever watch and the summary says:
"Four fascist libertines round up 9 teenages boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of physical, mental and sexual torture."
I mean yes, there's some pretty retarded stuff going on, but I didn't find it disturbing in the least, because it was just so unrealistic. Not to say this couldn't happen in real life, but I mean that the way it was shown in the movie was terribly done. Here's a few examples:
-The captured kids can freely roam around the house and go to a servant's bedroom to have sex with her, but noone ever bothers escaping? Right...
-The poop eating part... seems pretty impossible without puking. Not that I've tried, but I'm 99% I'd puke and pass out and be unable to eat it.
-Overall we just weren't shown much of how the captured kids dealt with everything. They were mostly pictured as very passive and taking everything as is. Didn't try to start a riot or fight their way out or anything.
Just badly done and I don't see how anyone can be too shocked by this due to the unrealistic way everything is shown. I'd recommend not wasting your time with this one, unless you like to see a lot of retarded horny actors have sex with eachother and eat chocolate icecream, while being told it's poop.
I've got a kind of boring week up ahead. After working out for 2 hours/day and 6 days/week for the past 8 weeks, I have a scheduled restweek next week. Sadly enough your body needs one every now and then. There's some upsides such as being even more motivated to get back at it at the end of the week, but mostly I don't like these weeks. My life's less structured and I do miss going to the gym a lot.
So now the question is what do I do with all this extra time I have to spend next week. I used to just play a ton more poker. I'd love to do that this week aswell and poker's definitely been going a bit better. I've been winning a tiny bit and my overall outlook on poker has improved a decent bit, but I'm still not nearly back to being as mentally strong as I used to be. I used to be able to lose 10%+ of my net worth in a day and be pretty much unphased and still play really well. Sometimes even making a comeback happen. However, at the moment I am affected by losses far quicker and more often than I'd like I have to quit after playing a few hundred hands.
This doesn't particularly speed up the entire recovery process, but I don't see anything else I can do besides giving it a bit more time. I should keep on recovering mentally and getting back to where I was eventually. At which point I should be able to play 50k+ hands a month again.
日本語の勉きょうはいいでした。二月以来に着々勉きょうをしました、そして週に十五時間と二十五時間のあいだぐらい勉きょうをしました。かん字は百ぐらいをしります。日本に行きたいですりょこうにまてります。たぶん、十月か十一月に行きます。
TRANSLATION: 日本語(Japanese) has been going well. I've been studying consistently over the past 2 months and I've studied ~15-25 hours a week. I know about 100 Kanji. I can't wait for the trip to Japan I want to go on. I'll probably go in October or November.
As far as eating out goes. I haven't eaten out a whole lot as of late. Had a modest but solid Japanese dinner with Deldar where I didn't take any pictures a couple days ago and then the pictures from these 2 meals that I had 2-3 weeks ago. The first 2 are from a random place we walked into. Quite cheap and superquick, surprisingly good quality food.
Pretty good appetizer.
Better steak than most steakhouses serve.
My first ever Japanese O-Bento with Lië in Soho.
Random dead pigeon in front of my appartment as I got back from the gym the other day.
I also saw a couple of movies worth mentioning:
-Go(2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299937/
Amazing Japanese movie about a Korean kid who grew up in Japan and is dealing with his ex-pro-boxer dad on 1 hand and the discrimination towards Koreans in Japan on the other hand. Especially the first ~20 min are CRAZY and the ending is really well done aswell. Definitely worth a watch.
-Intouchable(2011)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675434/
A very good french movie, about an unusual young guy who doesn't have much of a life, but then gets hired by a superrich quadriplegic man to be his servant/helper. Especially the actor who plays the young black guy does a really good job and keeps you entertained throughout.
-Akmareul Boatda(I Saw the Devil)(2010)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1588170/
Awesome Korean movie about a crazy serial killer who ends up killing the wife of a man you don't wanna mess with. The man of the murdered wife wants revenge and tries to make the serial killer's life a living hell.
-Das Experiment(2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/
This is a german movie based on the real events during the Stanford Prison Experiment(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment). ~20 men volunteer for an experiment. ~12 as prisoners and the rest as guards. They'll be locked up for 2 weeks and if they stay there for 2 weeks they'll get paid. As days go on, everyone starts to take things more and more seriously and eventually things get completely out of control. Pretty wild movie and crazy to think a lot of it happened in reality.
-Oasis(2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0320193/
Very original Korean movie. It's about the relationship between a mentally challenged guy who just came out of prison and the daughter of the man he killed while drunk driving who suffers from cerebral palsy and can barely do anything physically. There's a few really beautiful scenes and overall the movie's just awesome to watch. Korean movies are the best!!!
Didn't see any good english movies this past month. But foreign movies are generally better anyway :)
That's about all I did. Hopefully I won't be too bored this coming week and hopefully I can soon start to put in more volume playing poker.
