robbieinjapan.com

Although it is March 10 and it went up to the 60s at one point a few weeks ago, it actually snowed tonight. When I left for judo before 5pm, it was getting dark and was mostly raining just starting to turn into snow. After judo practice, walking back to my apartment, it was fully snowing and there was snow covering the street.

It was nice to see the snow since I heard a lot of snow fell back home in Philadelphia so I was sad not to be able to see that storm. However, I am definitely looking forward to it becoming spring and warming up.

I have been very busy trying to focus on work and getting judo started up so I haven’t written or responded to people much but I will try to start writing again to let you all know what is going on here!

I went to the Kodokan for Judo practice tonight. In order to move up to the next level of class, I have to go 13 times in the first month. This is the second week and I have only gone 3 times now so I will have to make up for it later in the month if I want to go to the next level next month. As you can see, Judo is a pretty big commitment. Considering that there is no class on Sundays and February only has 28 days, 13 times this month means going to the Kodokan for practice more often than every other day!

In any case, my body doesn’t feel as sore after practice this time but that might be because the work we did in class today involved work with the legs and sweeping and didn’t involve as much somersaulting or falling to the mat like last time. I’ll have to see if I am sore tomorrow or not. I was thinking about going to Judo again tomorrow but I realize now that tomorrow is actually a national holiday so I don’t think the Kodokan will be open.

According to Wikipedia’s page on Public Holidays in Japan, tomorrow is “National Foundation Day” (建国記念の日). Wikipedia says about this day: “This national holiday was established in 1966 (and first held in 1967) as a day to reflect on the establishment of the nation and to nourish a love for the country. From 1872 to 1948, February 11 was known as Kigen-setsu (紀元節^?), a holiday commemorating the day on which—according to the Nihon-shoki—Emperor Jimmu is said to have acceded the throne in 660 BCE.”

So, it looks like this is a holiday originally from just before and during Japan’s imperial times that was converted into the more democratic “National Foundation Day”.

Today I was looking through my work records from last year and realized that I didn’t start working until May. I worked hard for about 2 months and then coasted for the rest of the time (or at least, I may have worked hard but did not make much financial progress after those first 2 months).

So, the way I see it, this year I am starting work almost 2 1/2 months early. Also, this year, compared to last, I have a lot more experience, a lot more contacts, a lot more knowledge and a lot of sites left over from last year so I am looking forward to getting back to work and making some money.

One thing I forgot to mention regarding Judo is that you can get your name (or whatever you want) embroidered on your gi (uniform) or belt. So, I got my last name in Japanese characters (クンズ) embroidered on the left side of my belt in black and I got the Japanese word for “profit” or “profitable” (利益) on the right side of my belt in red. The reason I have 利益 (rieki) is because I want to become profitable and also make profit in my work. I originally got these characters on my business cards that I made when I went to an internet marketing seminar (by Eben Pagan) last summer. So, when I found out I could put another word on my belt besides my name, I went for these characters. I chose red because red is my favorite color although on further reflection, perhaps I should have chosen black or green for the characters since red is usually associated with loss in business. I don’t suppose it matters that much and besides, it looks very nice in red.

I woke up somewhat early today and tomorrow I intend to wake up earlier so I should prepare for sleep now. Hopefully I can get some good work done tomorrow early, as well.

Last Friday, I went to judo at the Kodokan for the second time. This time, the instructors said I didn’t have to participate in the part where people were doing somersaults since I hadn’t learned how to do it properly yet. For the second part of the class after the warm up, we are all split up into our separate skill abilities. My class had just one other student in it so I got to learn a lot. We practiced falling a lot and also a type of somersault which led to hitting the mat afterwards to stop the somersault. It gets pretty tiring having to do somersaults and falling from standing up again and again!

As I was leaving the Kodokan, the elevator doors opened up and there was only one guy in the elevator going down. It turned out to be Ryuta (隆太), a friend of mine who I had met a couple years ago. I met him for the first time when I went to a boxing match that my other friend, Ebine, was participating in. Both Ryuta and Ebine I met through my friend Alex. Apparently Alex met Ryuta through the Kodokan while practicing there.

In any case, it was a chance meeting to happen to get into the same elevator at that particular time. I think Ryuta said he was injured so he had been watching Judo practice from the 8th floor observation stands. My practice on Friday took place on a different floor… I think it was the 6th floor. In any case, I got the chance to talk to Ryuta for a while after I met him again.

My birthday was yesterday (February and I got the chance to go out to dinner. Overall, I feel pretty optimistic about this upcoming year and hopefully I will be able to succeed in my various business projects while also learning new languages. I received many e-mails, IMs, messages and posts on my Facebook wall about my birthday so thank you to everyone who contacted me!

Today shortly after I woke up, I went out on to my balcony and realized that it was very warm. In fact, today, it went up into the high 60s! So, I went outside and took a walk around my neighborhood without a jacket. I was able to get to see a lot of areas that I had not yet seen since I haven’t really explored this area much at all yet. I think I still would rather prefer to live closer in to the city but I really cannot complain about the spaciousness of the apartment I am living in now (especially at this price).

Tomorrow hopefully I will go back to Judo for a third time and also begin working hard again on my business projects (I am planning on waking up early). We will see how this goes though!

I went to judo for the first day today. The beginning was a kind of warm up that everyone did. We just stood in lines and did various exercises across the mat. At one point, we had to do somersaults… I don’t think I have attempted to do a somersault in over a decade but I just went for it and it didn’t turn out too bad.

After the warm up, the class was split up into two parts and I was in the part with a few other guys who just started learning so I got more instruction about what was going on and learned a few things. It was nice to get some exercise and also learn a new martial art.

Although it was raining today, when it became night time and I had to return back home from judo practice, the rain turned to snow and it was snowing pretty hard. There is snow on the rooftops now which is an interesting sight since it rarely snows in Tokyo, perhaps once a year.

In any case, I also got a lot of Tagalog studying done today and have learned 405 cards now… since there is one card for English to Tagalog and another card for Tagalog to English for the same word/phrase, this is about 202 total words/phrases.

I checked one of my business projects and although it is progressing a little, it seems to have hit a wall in some respects and it is certainly not earning me enough money for the amount that I am spending each week to keep the project going. I am not sure what I am going to do regarding this. Either I will scale back the efforts so that I spend less money until I can start earning money from the fewer sites that I focus on or I am going to try to bring in some new tactics to help boost the efforts. At any rate, because my income is so low right now, I cannot really afford to keep this project going at the rate it is since it is costing me too much each week. I will have to either add some new tactics to the efforts and hope that the project as a whole starts earning me money quickly or I will have to succeed in another project to gain me the money I need to keep this one going for a little while longer. We will see what happens.

Tomorrow I am going to begin training in Judo at the Kodokan. According to Wikipedia, the Kodokan is “the headquarters of the judo world”. You can also check out the Kodokan website.

I received my black belt in Kenpo Karate which I trained in mostly as a kid. I did go back to the same dojo when I was older and trained there for a few months every now and then mostly during the summers but never did much seriously there after I received my black belt as a kid.

Judo is more about grappling and throwing while karate is more about striking, punching and kicking so although both are martial arts, they are still pretty different.

In terms of my martial arts knowledge, this is a good thing since I will be able to round out my skills by learning more about throws and grappling which I didn’t get much training in when studying Kenpo Karate. On the other hand, because it’s completely new material, my karate training will not help me so much perhaps.

In any case, tomorrow is February 1 which means it is a new month so I can join and begin studying at the Kodokan. I am not sure what to expect but look forward to meeting some new people there, learning about judo and also having the opportunity to get out of my room more often and exercise.

It will also be nice to study at the Kodokan since judo is known worldwide and as Wikipedia says, it is the headquarters of the judo world, so as a judoka (judo grappler), it is a very prestigious place to study. Judo is also a martial art started in Japan so it is nice to take advantage of the fact that I am living in Japan and can study this art.

In any case, I am continuing to learn more Tagalog which is interesting from my martial arts education standpoint as well because when I studied Kenpo Karate, at my studio we also learned arnis which is a martial art using rattan sticks developed in the Philippines. So, perhaps if I learn Tagalog well enough, I can take a trip to the Philippines sometime and learn more arnis there.

Now that I am settled back in to my place here, I want to pick up my language learning in the other languages I want to learn: German and Mandarin Chinese. I am still a bit worried about money though since I am not at the level I want to be at but things are still progressing so I cannot complain. I continue to work each day but I will have to gain more discipline to fit judo and language studies into my day, as well.

On that note, I will try to go to sleep early tonight and wake up early tomorrow. Tomorrow is a Monday and the first day of a new month (February, also my birthday is in 8 days), so it will be a perfect time to begin new habits.

I noticed the moon is getting fuller tonight. I don’t know why but I have noticed since this last summer that every time the moon begins to get fuller, things just naturally go my way.

It is no exception now, either. It’s late so I want to go to sleep so unfortunately I cannot write much.

However, I put down a very good piece of structure in a certain project I am working on that has very high potential for profit. I am very pleased with its setting up and now I will await the results.

Also, I gained the energy to begin my studying in Tagalog. I hired a teacher off of the same site I use to hire my workers for my other projects. She basically makes flashcards for me for my flashcard program so I don’t have to spend my time typing in the words. It is also somewhat of a surprise since I never know exactly what words I am going to get. In any case, I made good progress today and learned 200+ words in Tagalog. I also feel like I got a lot more used to the vocabulary and feeling of Tagalog so that will make it easier to learn later on.

Additionally, on a forum I frequent, a member there private messaged me about a thread I had made concerning finding e-mails online of people who want to learn French (for my French learning project) and he basically said in his message that he had run a test for me and got a list of 200+ e-mails for me of people who potentially might want to learn French. Now all we have to do is sell them!

When I got off the plane, I always seem to have trouble at customers. It’s like the last gate you have to pass through before you are really free to run out into the country.

In the past, usually I forget to fill out the form and I have to go all the way back to their counters and fill it out. This time though, I remembered it so I wouldn’t run into that problem.

I went up and saw that there was a completely open line so I went over and gave my form to the woman and the passport. She asked me if I could open my bags, I said, “sure” (although I wonder what would have happened if I had told her “no”).

Since I left most of my stuff in Tokyo, I didn’t have a lot of normal things coming back… like clothes and such. Instead half my large suitcase was taken up with a pull up bar still in the box with the flash images of a guy and phrases like “Get Strong… Get Ripped… Quick!”

This girl actually opened this box, took a look inside, saw a bunch of metal pieces for 2 seconds and just decided it wasn’t worth her time and closed it. Then she asked me if it was okay if she could see my other bag (the smaller one and I also wonder what would have happened if I had told her “no” here, too).

She opened the bag and in this bag, I had entirely vitamins and health supplements. I had like 10-15 bottles of various shapes and colors. She immediately closed the bag. I don’t know what she must have thought about me seeing me coming all the way from America to Japan with just an “Iron Gym” pull up bar and 10-15 bottles of supplements but I am sure it was more amusing than some of the other travelers.

I wrote up instructions for the program I want and sent them to my PHP programmer in the Philippines named Arnel. He wrote a script for me in PHP before and is available online a lot so I like him. He was even online this past Saturday night and I was able to discuss the project with him. One of the nice things about living in Japan is that the Philippines is only an hour behind in terms of time zone difference so it makes it really easy to communicate with my filipino workers.

Anyway, this program is going to help a lot. Before, I felt blind in the creation of links so this program will help me see the results of each worker and also allow me to feed orders into the system which will then distribute these orders to the workers as they arrive in to work. This is good because every worker’s work desire is different so even if I give an order to a worker, it may not be completed until a week or two later. This system will give out the orders when the worker arrives to work and when they stop working, it will keep track of how much they completed of the assignment and then give it to the next worker who arrives to complete.

This work flow is more like a stream rather than throwing assignments piece meal at the workers which I feel is inefficient and not focused enough on the orders which are what really should be completed. This program will bring focus back to the work orders and will give the work in order to the workers as they come to work so that even if a worker does not work for 2 weeks, an assignment will not be trapped with him or her. If he or she does not come to work for 2 weeks, the assignments will continue to be completed in good order by the other workers. Hence, the process flows more like a stream.

So, that program is being coded now by Arnel and I look forward to being able to implement it with the workers as soon as it is completed.

However, I have other challenges that have arisen besides waiting around for that to finish. I have maybe 5 or more projects going on concurrently and most of them are in the beginning phases which means that I do not receive any money from them and in many cases, I am actually losing money because I have to spend some money to push the projects forward. The main project that was earning me income before has been reduced almost to nothing because of a few problems in addition to my not maintaining it.

Since the projects I am working on are long term and I don’t expect to earn money from them in the next 2 weeks, that means I need to find some new methods to earn money in the next 2 weeks or else I will risk having to dip into my savings in the future (2-3 months from now if I were to earn $0 between now and then) to continue to pay for my living expenses and workers (workers particularly).

I have some ideas in mind and I feel pretty confident I will be able to hit my aim by December 13. If I hit my aim, I will return to the United States for winter break.

I haven’t written here in a while but hopefully I can start writing in this again on a more consistent basis.

I left off with going to Yamanashi. Atsushi was kind enough to invite me to some sort of even that they were having there. It was sponsored by a number of companies and was held at a type of cottage resort. There were many different kinds of cottages there and since it seemed like most of the stores were closed, I am guessing it is more of a summer resort.

In any case, it was interesting to see the area there. On the way back from the resort, we drove in Atsushi’s car and we could see Mount Fuji. I am not sure if this is the first time I have seen Mount Fuji or not. It is probably the first time I had seen it at that distance. It was a lot taller than I had expected and on this particular day, I guess because of the atmosphere, it looked like it was floating in the sky since the lower part of the mountain was hidden so it appeared as if it were not attached to the ground.

We also stopped at a flea market which was interesting to see. After that, we went to a conveyer belt sushi place… I was not familiar with this particular chain but it was pretty good. It seems that the sushi at these kinds of chain conveyer belt sushi places is cheaper in Yamanashi than in Tokyo.

I estimate living costs are 40% and food costs are 75% when compared to Tokyo.

These past few weeks, I have been continuing to work. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do much language study. I will have to try to figure out a way to get the languages I want to study into my day.

Yesterday, I went to my apartment company and paid for two months since I am going back to the US on December 15th for the holidays. I opened my hotmail inbox and see an e-mail from Sakura House personally addressed to me with a note saying that they offer free storage for people going home for the holidays. Too bad I didn’t see that e-mail in time, now my suspicions are confirmed for why the guy at the apartment company was so surprised when I told him I wanted to pay for two months because I was going home during that time.

I probably could have saved a few hundred dollars but I suppose it is alright, I will have to make it worthwhile when I get back to this room after the holidays.

I have quite a few projects I am working on but I think at this time I am going to change some of the priorities for the next segment of time. Top project is now going to be my work with the backlinking teams. It is not running as well as I would like it so I feel I need to study it more and move it in a better direction. I also want to expand it and add a few more features to improve its function. It is also the skill most directly related to gaining income at this time (although I have yet to profit from it).

This will be the second area I have to get running smoothly. The first one was in the site production area (since it is important to have sites to become the material that you promote). I was able to get that to a satisfactory level so the next challenge will be getting this next section up and running well. It is a bit different from the site production process. However, if I can get this process running well then I will have completed this section.

In any case, hopefully I will continue to write so I have the chance to write in more detail about this.