Archive for August, 2006

Over 400 000 people are expected to come over the few days that the festival Azabu Juuban.

Summer is festival time in Japan. And all over the place too. I went last night to the Azabu Juuban festival in Roppongi. Squeezed in between the fashionable Roppongi Hills and the notorious night club district thousands of people had come for some of that festival stuff. Going to a festival is fun, and there are a lot of them through out the year, and all over the country. Chances are good to see one if you come to Japan. Read more on the 4 things that you always find at a Japanese festival, the Azabu Juban festival being no exception: Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: festival, Japan, Roppongi

In a month there is a competition coming up and I now focus my training on improving my sparring. My boxing has improved but I feel that the overall sparring needs a lot of work. I picked up this technique at YouTube, check it out:

By feinting a low-kick to the thigh you make your opponent guard with a leg cut. With him standing on one leg you simply sweep the other one.

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Summer is here in full swing. It means it’s hot and humid. Being from a very dry climate I did not know about the power of mould. Coming back to Japan after a few weeks abroad I found a few nasty surprises in our house. There was mould booth here and there. On the tatami mat a thin layer of it was found. When I opened the shoe cupboard I found the stuff on many of my shoes. This was no big deal and could be wiped of easy with a cloth. Worse with a coat in the wardrobe. I don’t no what to do with it. Maybe dry cleaning or I’ll just through it out. Read the rest of this entry »

A gaijin card is a special photo ID card that foreigners are obliged to carry with them at all times while in Japan. The full name of it is “gaikokujin-tourokusho” in Japanese. Tourists should carry their passports, and the rest of us who are here for more than 90 days this little piece of laminated paper. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: gaijin, card

People chilling on a not so crowded Yugahama beach in Enoshima, southwest of Tokyo.

Tokyo is a city by the sea. Something that’s easy to forget when you are busy shopping in Shibuya or Akihabara. But it’s there and you can swim in it. So, you’ve lived in Tokyo for a while, and realised that the summer is very hot. Maybe you’ve already been to the pool and found it to small and crowded. Ok, it’s time for the beach: Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Yugahama, beach, Enoshima

On the way of learning the two sound alphabets of Japanese I used another book that I want to recommend. “Katakana for fun” by Noriko Yoneji. It has a method of associating every katakana with an image that is easy to remember. At first I thought the book looked stupid and childlike, but as I began learning I realised that this mnemonic method worked very well for me. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll tell you a secret. Everybody does it. Schoolgirls, adults and businessmen alike. It takes place in buildings with covered windows in private rooms that you discreetly rent by the hour. It’s karaoke. The Japanese abbreviation that means “empty orchestra” and is performed by singing your favourite songs to a pre-recorded track, reading the lyrics from a TV monitor.
The ladies in the photo have absolutely everything to do with the article.

Karaoke has gone from trend to hype to now being just one the many things people do to amuse themselves. Gone are the karaoke bars, the taxis with karaoke and other crazy things from the 1980s. Now it is all done in a karaoke box, just like they did it in the movie “Lost in translation”. The boxes are actually small rooms located in “karaoke palaces”, buildings that host between ten or 50 rooms. Read the rest of this entry »