I still like Shibuya despite going there so much.

Since my friends want to go to the touristy spots and I have seen these areas many times over, I let them go out exploring themselves. I taught them how to get around and they don’t have any problems so I am free to go off and do as I please.

Rather than viewing this as a vacation, I came here to see whether I wanted to live in Tokyo a little while longer or live in Taipei, Taiwan. I feel bad because I know my family wants me to stay back in the area I grew up but I feel at this time it is not helping me grow. Besides, I think it is the quality of time you spend with someone, not the quantity. Even the flicker of recognition across a train car can be deeper than a 10 hour conversation. I still believe family is important so if I were to live here I would still make every effort to return to my homeland to visit.

When I went to Shibuya, I ran into an old Jamaican friend of mine who hustles the streets to get people into a hip hop clothing store. I talked with him and he eventually ended up buying me a drink from the convenience store and taking me to this Nigerian barber shop so that he could eat his lunch.

Afterwards, he introduced me to a friend of his named Dede who is from Los Angeles and married a Japanese women. He turned 30 yesterday and was celebrating at the small bar he works at. I hung out there for many hours. Apparently Dede owns a skateboard team and does music so a lot of Japanese skateboarders and music producers were hanging out in there. I talked to them and even got the chance to do some freestyle rapping over the music they were playing.

It is funny because one of the kids sitting in this bar named Jesse knew my best friend in Japan, Alex, because they went to the same university (Temple University in Japan). Alex left to go to Tenri University in order to train to make the Judo olympic team. For some reason Alex and I have a strange connection where we tend to meet each other’s friends in random places or have our friends meet each other in strange ways. I guess this is one of those times.

In any case, I am still travelling about Shibuya meeting people and getting introduced. Today I met a professional rapper and he gave me a discount on his CD so I bought it for about $10. He was a pretty cool guy and showed me his music video on his iphone there in the street.

After landing down, we took the bus from the airport which is outside the city and it was nice to watch as the surroundings slowly turned from the country side to the large metropolis that is Tokyo. We made our way through the snaking and winding highways before reaching our destination in Shinjuku where we sublet an apartment.

I talked to a taxi driver and gave him the address and luckily we were able to find it without problems. It’s a nice place with enough room to put down three futons next to each other in one room for us to sleep and have another another room to put our suitcases in. So, it is enough room to be able to exist.

My friends seem to be enjoying themselves especially with the cuisine here. Everything we have eaten has been very good, they have said, from the noodles to curry to sushi to my personal favorite, katsudon (pork cutlet on egg and rice).

As for my experience, I have lived here for 2-3 years, so it is nothing new to be back here but I definitely feel a sense of well being now that I am here. I think it is somewhat tantalizing that I will be here for only 2 weeks before having to move on to Taipei, Taiwan but I can always come back here if I want.

As for now, we have been exploring the city a bit and riding the trains. The weather hasn’t been so good and a few days it has even snowed! I brought my leather jacket here and a light jacket so it is somewhat annoying since I do not want to get my leather jacket wet. I have to use my lighter jacket and just wear a lot of shirts on top of each other.

Besides that though, a day or two has been sunny and today seems to be one of those days. It will be nice to go out.

Today I was planning on going to the Kodokan but I ended up deciding to meet up with Ayaka and eventually got a hamburger in Shinjuku for dinner.

This turned out to be a lucky move because I found out later that today is a national holiday and the Kodokan is not open on national holidays so I would have likely gone all the way there to find out that it was closed!

Actually the national holiday was yesterday but in Japan if a national holiday falls on a Sunday, the next day (Monday) is a day off for everyone.

So, this time the national holiday was the Vernal Equinox which according to Wikipedia: “This national holiday was established in 1948 as a day for the admiration of nature and the love of living things. Prior to 1948, the vernal equinox was an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shunki kōrei-sai (春季皇霊祭)”.

It is somewhat humorous to hear that a holiday was changed from an imperial ancestor worship festival to a holiday for “the admiration of nature and the love of living things”. The imperial ancestor worship festival sounds much more significant. This also seems to be another example of a holiday that got watered down after the Japanese empire collapsed.

I spoke with my sister today since she was over at the house and I had to speak to my Mom about sending money through Western Union to someone I am working with in Pakistan. My sister is off to India for three months tonight so I wish her a fun and safe trip!

It is getting late and I am trying to correct my sleeping schedule again so I am off to bed now. I will try to write more often soon… I think some exciting things are coming my way in terms of work.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.