SATURDAY: BOXING DAY

KEIO BOXING TEAM

     This Saturday was special. It was the first day I was going to attend boxing practice at Keio University Boxing Gym. The training was scheduled for 11:00. I arrived at the place 10 to. Everyone seemed to be really exited to see a gaijin there, but positively exited. 

     When everyone gather, we all got in a circle and the captain said, that " there are new among us, let's introduce ourselves". New among us meant Antony. So I introduced myself in Japanese and bowed, everyone bowed back. Then each team member introduced himself and bowed, everyone bowed back. 

      There were around 20 guys that day at training session. And 2 little cute Japanese girls - they are managers. Managers keep the time, give water and other drinks to boxers, dry out boxing gear after practices, wash boxing equipment and take care of everything around. It is so great to have them to be honest! 

      Out of the whole team not everyone spoke English, so to say only 3 people spoke English, others knew some words but were willing to communicate. Today's training was based on sparing. First warm up, of course. They were explaining to me every exercise, even though I said that I will just follow and do what they all are doing. It wasn't that difficult. The most difficult thing was the weather, very humid and heavy air, not like in Vienna. Additionally, a storm was heading to Tokyo that night, that made the air even heavier. 

     After warming up,  guys started sparing: 10 rounds with rotation. There were a few newbies and me. They explained that sparing was too dangerous and I needed to look the first time. Even though I explained that it wasn't my first time, they asked me not to participate today. 

     The boxing gym by itself is awesome! It is subsidized by Keio university, so participants only pay 500 yen a month (4 euro). There is everything you can think about in this gym - you don't need any equipment. Gloves, bandages, other gear, even shoes to borrow. Managers serve some powdered drink with ice during training. This is a heaven for a boxer! They even gave me a pair of shoes for running outside. 

     Another interesting thing is about the boxers themselves. I was one of the oldest (few guys of my age), some were from Keio High School (16-17 y.o.). And I was one of the biggest with my 65 kilos. LOL. The heaviest guy in the gym is 68, others are smaller. This is such a big difference with Europe: there in the gym I am one of the smallest. 

      The training was approximately 3 hours. Seems like Japanese people enjoyed talking some English and discovering a new culture. They told me they knew something from Russia: Matreshka, pirozki and borsh (tool me a while to figure out what those things were in Japanese pronunciation). 

      After the training they invited me to a restaurant. I had no money with me so I called Ondrej to join us and bring me money. We ate at some spaghetti place, had great time and nice talks. In the end the team said they would pay the lunch, not only mine, but also Ondrej's. I tried to resist that but couldn't. This is real Japanese hospitality. Great nation and great people. We exchanged contacts in LINE (mobile social network that all Japanese are using) and emails (they use emails instead of sms). 

TAIFUN

     During the day we have received a number of warning from school that a severe storm was to hit Tokyo this Saturday night. There was a possibility that Monday classes would be cancelled. 

     At night it was raining a lot, with strong wind; but nothing special. We had a dinner with some guys from the dorm at Kyohei's room (some Japanese specialties again) and decided to stay in the dorm and simply hang out with people. 

KEIO University Circles (Sakuru)

     We were back around 8 a.m. from last night. Met lots of people from our dorm going to school on the way. I decided I needed to get up at 12, as today was the last day to enjoy crazy days at campus, where people are dancing, singing and recruiting you. 

     I managed. The day was sunny and warm. On the way out I saw Kyohei, our Japanese friend, and we headed to the campus together. 

     I was simply enjoying the weather and great people, and awesome atmosphere. After a tasty lunch, I went around to search for interesting clubs and talk to people. Many clubs tried to recruit me. To my luck I found a representative of Keio boxing club sleeping on a table. Luckily, he spoke Japanese. He explained, that this is all serious, they train 6 days a week. He gave me his number and a map with directions how to get to the gym. And here came Kyohei, just on time. He was now free and was eager to show me the way to the boxing gym.

     We walked to the eastern  of the campus, down the hill. Along the road there were many buddings for different sports: tennis, judo, sumo, gymnastics and many more. The sports culture in really strong here in Japan, I was completely wrong in one of my first posts. We passed by the boxing gym and saw some people there, they waved at us asking to come it - that's what we did. They have taken us with Japanese hospitality. Two guys were on the ring, others looking. Few girls were also there watching the match. Kyohei helped to explain my situation in Japanese and the guys were eager to see me the next day (Saturday) at 11 in the gym. Awesome.

     Kyohei left and I returned to the main square and main stage, freestyle ballers were performing: 

Then it seemed like it was over: the guys in the suits started to walk around yelling smth loudly. I went in to the building which is headquarters of all clubs. There are 5 floors and all the rooms there are occupied by circles. Yesterday all walls of this building were full with promotional posters everywhere. Now people were taking everything off- school was about to start tomorrow. Japanese people have classes on Saturdays as well. 

     On the third floor I found a big room full of people, my favorite band (from yesterday) was playing again. I joined the dancing near the stage. After the performance, I asked, when I could hear them play again. One of the guys took me to their room, gave me a brochure, explained the schedule and gave a CD of their songs. Great people! Japanese hospitality! I returned back to the big room, thanked all the musician and vocalists (and they thanked me), and  a tour around the building. On some of the floors people were just practicing musical instrument (by themselves) in the middle of the corridor. WOW. These people are strange in a very cool way.

Performance of K.B.R. modern Shacks band

NEW JAPANESE FRIENDS

     Kotani-san's wife was downstairs and willing to study some Japanese with me. We learned for around an hour till it got busy in her office. I decided not to disturb and left. 

     In the lobby few Japanese guys met me. They said they were pleased to meet me, and were happy to hear I was Russian. One said, he wants to go to Sochi Olympics, but without Russian friends he can't do it... We exchanged contacts in Line. In a few hours both guys sent me messages, how pleased they were to meet me, what their hobbies was, where they were from and that they wanted to hand out some other time. Being a foreigner in Tokyo is definitely an advantage. 

The Awesome DAY-NIGHT

JAPANESE CLASS and HIYOSHI CAMPUS

      Finally awesome sunny days are back to Tokyo. Today is Thursday, a day that most or our CEMSies are having a Japanese class. It is a basic Japanese for beginners who never had any Japanese before. As last night I promised to go to the class too, the is morning 5 minutes before leaving the dorm Ondrej came to my room and woke me up. 

      We met other guys at the Hiyoshi station as only they knew where we were heading. We wondered around the campus for 15 minutes looking for the correct building and finally found it (a little late to class).

The teacher was really nice and friendly and spoke good English. The content of the course was quite basic: my name is, I am from etc. I remember when I had my first Japanese class back in St.Petersburg. Everything just sounded like a set of unordered sounds impossible to memorize. I guess that is how it now sounds to the guys. For me now I understand the language a little better and some things start to make much more sense than before, when I was starting with the language. 

      After the class we headed to the cafeteria to eat. Outside there were lots of students. It was the third day of recruiting for circles (extracurricular activities clubs). What it is: it is many people with leaflets, dressed up , are going around campus trying to recruit you. They give you papers and invite you to info sessions. Of course all of them want to have gaijins in the circles, that's why they try hard. In the center of the main square of the campus there is a stage where all music and dance circles are performing today. They actually play really good music sometimes. 

      We had a big lunch in canteen and relaxed a little after. On the way back from the cafeteria we heard some really great music from the stage. Mattia, our CEMS colleague, started dancing. We joined him and went to the center of the crowd. Mostly people were listening, around 20 in front near the stage were moving to the beat and jumping. We formed our small group and started dancing. Japanese people were really amazed. Suddenly people started joining our dancing circle, smiling and happily looking at us. Others started to take pictures and videos. It was really fun and the music was awesome! We have received a bunch of papers and offers to join tons of clubs... Now we have to choose. 

ROPPONGI

     The evening has started... We were supposed to meet with other CEMCies in the center, in the district called Roppongi. the plan was to meet up at 11:30 p.m.. Having approximately calculated the time needed to travel there we agreed to leave the dorm at 10:50. We came out and I realized that I forgot to take my money... As usually... Ondrej said, he could land me some, thus we went on. In a few minutes Ondrej realized that he has forgotten his phone... Lol. We returned back to the rooms.

     Somehow already in the train we realized, that we are late. No just late. Really late. We messaged the guys and it turned out they were also late, as they have taken a wrong train in a wrong direction.

To get to Ropongi we had to transfer once and go one more station. We got a little lost on the transfer station and somehow came out to the street. As we already (finally) had our Internet on phones working, we decided to take a walk. Finally we arrived at the meeting point 40 minutes late. But we were not the last ones yet, some people were still missing.

     Roppongi is very central locations with many restaurants, clubs and karaoke places. There are many foreigners (like us)wondering around at night, drinking and looking for fun. It was probably the first time I didn't feel a 100% relaxed, as the street is fool of African-Americans trying to offer any services you want. It is quite annoying. But the point is, that 90% of the "night promoters" were African-Americans, and 5% foreigners and maybe 5% were Japanese girls. 

     We were looking for a karaoke place with a all-you-can-drink option. In the end we decided not to take that option and buy drinks separately. The price for all night karaoke from 23:00-5:00 was 10 euro per person. Drinks around 4-5 euro. Really good deal. The guy at the counter didn't speak any English and seemed a little scared of a group of gaijins (there were 11 of us). But finally we got our big room and had looots of fun (as usually at karaoke). The hit of the day was Without Me by Eminem. 3 hours passed by quickly. We wanted to finish strong and as the last song have chosen Barby & Ken. Impressive performance by everyone! 

     Around 4:20 we headed out. Just a little of topic: in Japan you never leave tip, it is not polite. Back to the story. We got out of the place quite full of drunk Japanese people on high hills and in pink shirts. A police was taking care of some drunk guy in a suit who was laying down on the ground and smoking a cigarette. We split in 3 groups and got a cab, the direction: famous Tokyo fish market. 

     The ride was quite expensive, as only catching a cab costs 7 euro. We paid around 24 Euro for 10-15 minutes. Taxi driver seemed to know where we were going, however turned out he didn't. We got out somewhere and called the guys - there were already at the meeting point.

 Tokyo metro

 Love hotel

 Shibuya

 Karaoke

 Drunky1

 Drunky 2

Tokyo by night

TOKYO FISH  MARKET

      Now we had phones and Internet so finding our way to the place approximately 15 minutes. Tokyo fish market is quite a famous place for tourists. 30 people can get a guided tour every morning. We arrived before 5 and all the spots were already taken. We had a look around the market:looks like fish market. People are busy working, riding at their little cars and motorollers. Seems like they don't really like the foreigners there too much, as they always disturb them from work. 

     As we didn't get the tour, we went straight to the famous sushi place. Actually, there are 2 famous sushi restaurants, really small ones. As Larry says, the quality of the fish differs there approx 10%. Thus we queued in front of the best sushi place. There were at least 50 people in front of us, none of them Japanese. At 5 in the morning by the way. After waiting in line for around an hour (and the line wasn't moving) we decided to queue for the second best restaurant. The wait there was 20-30 minutes. We were close to the food, delicious food...

     The sushi set there costs 3500 yen ( approx 30 Euro). 6 little maki and 7 sushi, plus tea and miso soup. The place is really small, 12-15 seats, around the sushi bar. 3 people working at the sushi bar in front of you. You can see the fish (already cut and ready) sliced behind the glass in front of you. The miso soup is delicious, with little shells inside it. The sushi are tasty! This is not possible to describe, you have to try it yourself! The sushibarmen are cooking in front of you and putting sushi to a plate in front of you one by one, smiling and telling you, what that is, in Japanese-English. Everyone gets slightly different sushi set, seems like it is completely random. When you are done enjoying, you stand up, pay, thank them and leave - so that the next customer can come in and enjoy amazing sushi experience. No cameras are allowed inside, so unfortunately no pictures and no videos. But great aftertaste! The only possible problem now is that we will not be able to enjoy sushi anymore, the quality won't be the same...

 Inside the famous sushi restaurant

Two Rainy Days

      Last two days it was raining quite a lot and non-stop. So we have used those few rainy days to study and work hard, in order to have great time when the sun comes out.

GYM GREETING RULES

     Visiting training room was fun today. Japanese people are so friendly everywhere, always welcome you and bow. This is not the case in the gym, no one says neither hello nor bye. I have asked a Japanese guy who spoke English in the gym why it was like that. He couldn't really explain, only said, that in the gym if you don't know a guy, you never greet. Sometimes those things confuse me a lot here in Tokyo. 

COOKING AT HOME

     Those days Ondrej and me decided that we will cook more at home. A huge supermarket just opened in the building of our dorm at the first floor and finally we can buy not extremely expensive meet there. 

      We wanted to have a good meal and decided to go for fish with noodles. For that we needed to buy cooking oil. The problem was, that we didn't know how cooking oil was in Japanese. We looked at a shelf with tons of different bottles with yellow slow liquid that looked like oil. So we picked one and decided to ask on the cash desk if it was oil. Of course when paying we forgot to ask what it was...

     We arrived back to our rooms. It was Ondrej's turn to cook. In a few minutes he ran into my room saying that everything is burning on a pan. I didn't see a big problem in it, as our pan didn't have any tefal on it and everything burned quite easily on it. I had to make that moment a history, have a look at this cooking magic: 

    The cooked fish tasted very strange. I have no doubt in Ondrej's cooking skills, but it was something else. I smelled the "oil" and it had a strong alcohol taste... I took a bottle and went down to ask Kotani-san about that magic thing. Turned out, it was mirin, liquid no intended for frying things. We have done a great job again! 

EVENING

     It was my turn to cook in the evening and now I went to the supermarket to finally get the correct oil. At the entrance I saw Masa, our Japanese friend, and we went in together. Finally I got oil, the right one. Then we spent some time cooking and talking with Masa about differences of Europeans and Japanese people.  After I asked him to help me translate one book. That morning on campus we picked up a brochure where all Keio University clubs are listed. There are soooo many of them! An extracurricular activity club here in Japan is called circle, students usually have to pay a fee to be in it. Last two days all members of different circles are running around with papers and leaflets trying to recruit freshmen to join their circles. Everyone can choose a club for themselves, here are some activities they do: many music, theatre and vocal clubs, ecology, economics, law, English, book lovers, yacht, cameras, Russia lovers, card games, sightseeing, magicians, dancing, christian, quizzes, finance, marketing, history, tea clubs, cycling, movies, kaligraphy, detectives, manga, art, programming, trains, astronomy climbing, debating, flower decorations, bird watching, robots, a thousand of clubs for every sport, startups, anime, healthy food, chess, Disney, fashion, games, cooking, salsa, joga, cheerleading, darts, bowling, cocktails, and many more.... 

STARBUCKS

     Starbucks is everywhere, even in Japan. However here is has a slightly different touch. Maybe because of the area that it is located, maybe because of some other reasons. Seemed to me, that we were the only people close to our 25s in the place, others were just young students or school pupils with books and laptops on the tables. The service is a usually good, the coffee is nice and as usually pricey, but the atmosphere is not there. People do the atmosphere. I am not saying here is bad, here is different. Next time I will probably look for a smaller and cozier place. 

BIRTHDAY PARTY 

     Today our floor mate had a birthday. Our Japanese Residence Assistant (RA) have invited us to celebrate to his room. Japanese guys cooked for us and the whole boys floor has gathered in a small Kyohei's room. But there was one girl - Kanae, she was helping to cook. Generally, no girls are allowed on our floor, however Kanae is a Residence Assistant, so she is permitted to stay wherever she wants.

     Food was awesome, Japanese and delicious. It is in Japanese culture to say that the food tastes great to those who cooked it. We have tried lots of Japanese specialties. The best part was eating a cake with hashi (chopsticks).

 Birthday cake

Rice cookers

      Interesting thing was that Kanae has entered the room only once to pick up the dishes, the rest of the time she stayed in the kitchen or in the door to the room, but didn't enter. I was wondering, if it was a tradition or she was just a little afraid of a bunch of guys. When I asked her, she said she had to clean the dishes, that's why she was staying there all the time... I asked Jason to ask her in Japanese, as it turned out, she didn't really feel comfortable in a room fool of some guys from foreign countries whom she didn't know well. Reasonable, but was interesting to observe for me. 

RANDOM PICTURES

 Was taking a run under some bridge today. Found these. Japanese people throw away things in sets or can someon explain this so me =) 

 Kanji read as Hiyoshi. Name of metro station and campus of Keio university. Means "good sunlight"

 Japanese audi

Sun coming out after 2 days of rain