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.
Since I had bought all the important furniture I needed, I was finally able to start work as an entrepreneur. I recently read an extremely good book aimed at entrepreneurs, a few of which tips increased my productivity by a LOT. Especially the To-Do-List recommended by the book has helped me a lot. I've already been using a To-Do-List for quite a while, but this one is much more useful and organized.
A To-Do-List is a list with all the things you need to do for the day. Here's an example of what mine looked like last Tuesday.
The Art of the Hustlerと言う本なんだけど、興味があれば、このサイトに行った方が良いと思う。
The book is called The Art of the Hustler. If you're interested check out this website.
This week I finished the design of my mobile application, contacted various companies and started discussing the options of the application's development with them. I hope to start development by the end of next week. Furthermore, I created my own Twitter and Facebook page. If you're interested, please give me a like or follow me. I'm posting regular updates about entrepreneurial things, news in Japan, various funny things and some things about what's going on in my own life.
On top of that I did a few others things this week like, going to Asakusa and Tokyo Sky Tree, going to an aquarium and going to a fireworks show. Japanese fireworks are WAY WAY better than western fireworks by the way!
マグロってなかなか大きいでしょ！
Tuna are pretty big, eh!
Wait till you see the Grande Finale!
何と言う音か知ってると、教えてください！ If you know the name of this song, please tell me!
グランドフィナーレ！！！ Grande Finale!!!
来年女の子と一緒に行きたいなー！素敵なデートである気がするんだ！ ^^
Seems like a great place for a date, so I'll aim for that next year! ^^
SO much has happened in the past 4 months, which helps to explain why I didn't update in so long. To be honest, another part of it was that I realized that the longer I postponed updating my blog, the longer it would take to update it. Nonetheless, here goes!
For the rest of April I was mostly extremely busy studying Japanese. I studied for about 6 hours a day for 3 weeks missing maybe 1-2 days. At this point in time I also became very busy deciding whether I wanted to move to Japan permanently or not. I knew that if I was going to decide to move I had to do it as soon as possible, because there'd be a lot of things to take care of. I don't even remember what was holding me back, but part of it was the language. I had always liked studying and talking Japanese, but to say I'm anywhere close to fluent would be a flat out lie. In the end though, I realized that I possesed more than Japanese skills to live in Japan and thus I shouldn't worry too much. Just study here and there and eventually I'll get fluent over time. I have no doubt that I'll eventually be able to get there. Having decided I'd move permanently, I went to search for an immigration lawyer.
During this time period I also did a couple fun things. First of all I went to a research institute of a friend that held an open day. They had a not-so-mini mini particle accelerator which was very impressive, they showed off a number of cool experiments, I got my picture taken with the discoverer of element 113(if I remember correctly) and one of the top 10 yo-yo'ers in the world gave a sick demonstration! Here's some pictures and videos!
Massive machinery!
Danger!
My Friend, the Genius and I
SO many wires!
Yo-Yo Champion
How is that possible?!?!?
Upside down aswell?!?
How Japanese people learn English
Wedding between a Japanese girl and some foreign guy at the Meiji Shrine
Making new friends at an art gallery
Writing Kanji
And of course I ate a TON of food!
Almost daily sushi lunch
Tsukemen Ramen
Tsukemen Ramen
Unagi
Best Tonkatsu ever!
One of Tokyo's best Soba restaurants. The Tenpura there was SICK!
After having decided I'd move to Japan, I found myself a lawyer. I've met with him a bunch of times for various reasons. First of all he set up my company in Japan, since then he's been working on my Visa, which should take another 4 weeks or so from now.
After that I started looking for an apartment. After doing some research I decided I definitely wanted to live in Ikebukuro, preferably West-Ikebukuro. I walked into a random real-estate agent and asked them to help me out. I was shown a lot of apartments, here's a selection of pictures.
Bit small...
Better!
Sick view on the 32nd floor!
Even bigger.
SICK living room, too bad I disliked the rest of the apartment.
Eventually I ended up going with the 2nd one, deciding that was the best value for money. The negotiating process was quite hard though. My application ended up being rejected, even though I showed them all the money in my bank accounts, more than enough to cover the rent for years AND I offered to pay the entire 2 years rent up front! Nonetheless, they wouldn't have me for some weird reason. Probably because I didn't want to pay for a guarantor company... I don't really see the point if I pay 2 years up front... STRANGE!
Before spending a few weeks in Europe to sell furniture in London and take care of some final things before leaving, I went to my friend's awesome hairsalon and took a few pictures of one of my favorite views in the world, a certain spot in Shibuya.
Not only is the hairsalon very nice, she's SUPERskilled at cutting hair too! (^_^)
After that in the middle of June it was off to the Netherlands and London for a bit. First up was London, where I stayed with my pro poker player friends for 2 weeks. Sadly enough I somehow injured my knee doing nothing on the very first day, which severely limited my mobility. Nonetheless I had a blast staying with them. We had a lot of good meals, played a lot of Wonders(amazing boardgame!) and in general caught up and hang out a bunch. I also took care of my furniture and had my PC and 30" monitor shipped to Japan. I surprisingly enough also got excited to play some poker again and won a decent bit of money during my stay in London, which was a nice bonus!
After 2 weeks in London there was about 1 week left in the Netherlands. I continued rehabbing my knee which was still far from 100%, I relaxed a lot with my family, saw a few friends and prepared for the move to Japan.
It was really good to see my friends and family in Europe, but at the same time I definitely realized that except for those connections there's not a lot left in Europe that interests me. There's not nearly enough to do and the food is way too bad in Holland. In London on the other hand, I just don't like the overall atmosphere/vibe of the city and the people all that much. So all in all, I'm very confident I've made the right decision to move to the other side of the world!
About a week or 2 into July when I got back to Japan, my main priority was getting a place of my own as soon as possible. Unfortunately at this point in time I heard that the application to the other apartment had fallen through and thus I took a look at 2 new apartments. This time in East-Ikebukuro. One of them I liked a lot and I decided to apply for that one instead.
The next week I met with the landlord in person. He turned out to be a really friendly businessman and superimpressed with my Japanese ability. I actually did most of the house searching process on my own in Japanese. He was extremely friendly and seemed genuinely excited to have me live in his apartment! That's my kind of landlord!
Unfortunately enough I did hear it'd take another week or 2 before I could move in, which meant being stuck in the tiny hotel room I had moved into after staying with friend for a week for a while longer. I spent most of my time preparing for the move-in.
Last week on the 1st of August it was finally move-in day! Unfortunately enough the apartment was still COMPLETELY empty. And by completely, I really mean completely. No fridge, no bed, no lamps, no curtains, no microwave, no furniture, no nothing. Which meant a lot of work was to be done. I got to it straight away and have worked about 14 hours a day since then. After a few days, on Monday, I had most of it done. The last few days I've been busy getting organized, finishing details and even some preparations for the getting back to the gym, getting back into a routine of studying Japanese and making some preparations for my businesses.
I actually have an idea for a 2nd business aswell now, although a smaller business. The first one will be a mobile application on which I'll get properly started within a few days. As far as the apartment goes, I'm only missing lights, curtains, a bed and a laundry machine right now. The laundry machine and the bed will arrive within a few hours though, so it's really only curtains and lights that I still need to go after.
What it looked like on Saturday
1-2 hours later
What it looks like right now!
Nighttime balcony view!
I want to use the currently empty living room as a theater room and put a projector in there and a nice couch etc. It will take me a little while longer before I get to that though, because I still have a TON of stuff to do! So I better get back at it.
Frank
P.S. Also check out the AWESOME restaurants I went recently when 2 poker player friends visited me in Tokyo.
http://tokyofoodjournal.blogspot.jp/
The past 2 weeks since my last blog I've mostly spent doing 1 thing, studying Japanese. Nearly every Japanese person I meet says I'm really good at Japanese, but I completely disagree. There's a few areas in which I do fine, but mostly it's still pretty terrible. I'll start off by listing the things that I do think I'm quite good at.
Online messages/Text messages
Pretty much fluent. Pretty much anything I ever want to say in online messages and text messages I'm able to express with what I believe are relatively few mistakes. Some sentences structures are possibly still slightly unnatural and I'm sure you could notice here and there that I'm not a Japanese person, but those are minor things and I'm honestly fluent.
Understanding online and text messages sent to me is also quite easy. There's the occasional Kanji(chinese characters) I haven't learned yet or even a word I haven't learned at all, but it's pretty easy copy and pasting a word or 2 into a dictionairy every now and then. It's quite rare that I see some grammar used that I don't understand and I can't remember the last time there was something I didn't understand at all.
1 on 1 conversations with people
These aren't too bad either. Obviously this is more difficult than messaging, because you have to think more on the fly and be faster constructing sentences. Nonetheless I believe I do an overall okay job and I'm able to get most things across, even some reasonably long stories I manage to explain, although I'm sure I make a bunch of mistakes in the process and undoubtedly have a bit of an accent, although I've definitely come across foreigners with (hopefully) far worse accents than mine.
Understanding the person I'm talking with in 1 on 1 conversations usually isn't too hard either, since they quickly get a feel for how fast they can speak and what kind of vocabulary I have and if I don't understand something I can quickly say so and they can repeat it slower, explain it in a different way or sometimes I look up a difficult word in my phone's dictionary. Overall not too bad and especially when first meeting people, the kind of topics you discuss are super easy and it's really rare for there to be any sort of misunderstanding.
Conversations in public places like restaurants/supermarkets etc etc
I rarely have issues saying anything I need to. It's not too hard ordering things are asking where something is in a store. However menus can pose an occasional problem and I usually try to look at the menu of the restaurant before actually going there. Things like Sushi and Tonkatsu are very easy. I've eaten them before and the menus aren't so hard. When there's pictures accompanying the menus it also is pretty easy, but there's definitely types of food and restaurants that I mostly haven't been to, where I could not order food on my own. Sometimes it's written on a chalkboard in a handwriting that's nearly impossible to read and sometimes it's a type of food that I haven't eaten before and I don't know any of the Kanjis(Chinese characters) used to describe that food. Never poses a huge problem though.
Understanding people in these places is mostly not much of an issue either, but this is in a big thanks to that I actually know what kinds of questions people ask and often they also use body language or signal to what they mean. As an example, in the supermarket they often ask if you want a bag, I'm pretty sure they use another word for bag than I've learned, but I still haven't been able to catch what it is, because they speak so quickly. Nonetheless I've always understood, since it's the obvious question to ask and they always grab the bag, so I can see what they mean. Generally the rule is, if it's something expected I'm fine, but when it's something unexpected it's a lot harder and I'll need to ask them to repeat it.
TV/Movies
I haven't watched that many as of late, but the last 2-3 days I've noticed a serious weakness in my listening ability, so I've been doing more of this to work on that. There's the occasional TV program where I understand a shocking amount. Like recently there was some sort of super simple course about computers and computer software, where I don't know how, but I was able to understand a shocking amount of it. Furthermore there's the occasional old lady on TV that talks really slow, which is also semi-easy to follow. There's also inbetweens like some news items that are fairly simple and I get the main lines if what they're saying, but there's definitely also some programs that I don't understand a whole lot more than people that don't speak any Japanese, simply because they talk so fast and there's often lots of background noise in these too. The talkshows are a prime example of this. Movies/TV Series also vary. I definitely have subtitles on still, but I do find myself listening to the Japanese in all but the fastest/most complicated parts and usually catching the main structure of the sentence with the verb at the very least, sometimes even understanding a couple of simpleish sentences in a row completely.
Group conversations
This is the thing at which I want to get fluent at the most, but it's also the thing which I sadly enough think will take the longest. The main issue is that to properly participate in group conversations you need to be able to follow everything that's going on completely. You need to be able to grasp every nuance and understand everything that's going on. This would be hard enough if I was talking 1 on 1 with a Japanese person if he/she wouldn't adjust the speed at which he/she talked at all nor the vocabulary used, but in group conversations, since it's usually me and multiple Japanese people, it's only natural that they talk faster and more difficult Japanese. Furthermore in group conversations, things go back and forth a lot more and it gets really hard to 'follow all the action' and keep up with what's being said. When that happens, it gets hard to properly participate too, because if you don't know what's being said... well it gets hard.
It's probably also partly the contrast to English group conversations where I tend to talk quite a lot and simply being unable to express myself the same way as I am in English is kinda of shitty, but I guess it's simply unrealistic being able to this this after 13 months. If I remember correctly even when I had just moved to London and spent 6 weeks in Vegas during the summer it took me a little while to really get all the nuances in these types of conversations.
Apart from studying Japanese, I've gone to the gym a decent bit, ate out quite a lot(lots of return visits to this EPIC Sushi Bar, eat there almost daily now... it's impossible not to!) and I even played about an hour of poker. I'll probably try and start playing a bit more when I'm well rested and when I find the time. Oh and I bought a chair(to play poker), some shoes and started trying to dress better because everybody here does:
Anyway, that's it for now. Still enjoying everything about Japan that's better than the west(which is a lot), but I do wish I was as good at Japanese as I am at English(and Dutch) and I of course miss my friends living in other parts of the world!
Life in Tokyo's definitely underway now. Been FINALLY going to the gym again regularly. I really missed that, so have basically been every day except for last Tuesday when the gym randomly closed. I'm over the initial soreness and all so now I can work really hard, just the way I like it!
Besides the gym I've been checking out a bunch more restaurants. A friend took me took a really awesome Izakaya last week and I'm pretty sure I've found my local sushi spot in Ikebukuro where I can get 8 excellent pieces of Sushi for just 525Yen during lunch. Astonishing! I'll be coming here VERY regularly.
五百二十五円。。。すごいなあーー！！！
525 Yen.... WOOOW!!!
I've also been to a couple fun social outings including a b-day BBQ, salsa party, poker homegame and international party. My phone's randomly lost a couple of pictures, but I have this one left from the salsa party.
木曜日のサルサパーティー
Thursday's salsa party
I had to cut out a guy in the bottom right, I think he probably hates me too much to be in the same picture as me. Better leave it at that, since it's possible he may read this blog. Nonetheless the picture is too good not to post.
Today I spent the entire day studying Japanese. Learned a bunch of new Kanji and new grammar. Very happy with the new textbook I bought in Japan. It's looking really good so far and it's really interesting studying Japanese at a more advanced level now that I've moved on past beginner/lower-intermediate textbooks.
Mostly just posting up pictures and a video of my apartment in Ikebukuro. I honestly didn't really do anything on my last days in Seoul, besides buying this new watch:
In Japan so far it's mostly just buying things I need, ordering a ton off of Amazon and going to supermarkets/department stores, got a haircut etc. Also really enjoying the overabundance of good food again, which was seriously lacking for me in Seoul. And last but certainly not least I went to the fitness down the street and signed up. Most likely finally going to the gym again tomorrow. It's been long overdue and I'm madly excited!
Now without further ado, here's the pictures and video of my apartment.
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