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08/15/2006: "Japan Day 2"

Day 2

Woke up at 2PM and went to buy some cheesecake and sandwiches at the AM-PM. Bummed around until 8 o'clock. At 8, we got picked up by my dads friend: Inanobe. He took us to a small chinese restaurant in Kobukicho. At this restaurant, we realized that Inanobe doesnt speak a word of english and we have no way to talk to him. So I ask if the people at this chinese restaurnt speak chinese, which of course they do. I used my chinese to talk to someone who would talk to Inanobe and then translate it back to chinese. I was actually utilizing my chinese to translate japanese. It was a weird feeling. I feel my fluency of chinese pretty good now :]

My dads friend asked what we wanted to do, and since we had no idea of what there is to do, thats what we answered back. He said okay then called my dad. I talked to my dad on the phone and he told me who Inonobe was. Excellent, we are with a celebrity.

After eating, Inonobe took us to a friendship bar. We sat down on stools and they gave us drinks and girls came and sat next to us. It is their job to pretend to be our friends. We talked for an hour and a half while sitting on some giant moving stage that did a full circle around the bar after some time. These girls did some cabaret dancing then talked some more. I spotted a girl wearing a schoolgirl sailor outfit and told inonobe that I like that outfit a lot. He then arranged for that girl to sit next to me and talk to me for the rest of the time that I was there.

Leaving this place, we went to a karaoke which gave us some refreshment and we sang two songs and left because it was boring.

Walking around kobukicho, we found an arcade that had a punching bag game to test how hard you punch. My punch is 350 pounds per square inch. It isnt that great, but we spent a lot of time at this game punching it over and over to get high scores.

Inonobe then took us back to the chinese restaurant and we were taken to a back room and told to sit down. The owner came out, and gave us tea then introduced a guy named Toshio to us.

This toshio was a martial artist and wanted to talk to us about taichi. He said that when he was younger, he was a japanese karate champion. After winning a major competition, an old man, 64 years old, came up to him and challenged him to a fight. Toshio being a young cocky fighter took the challenge. Toshio threw his strongest punch to the face of the oldman but was destroyed by the oldman's power. Toshio immediately bowed and called the old man, "master". This old man taught him fighting taichi.

Toshio said that being a boxer is only as good as long as you are youthful. You start losing your power as you become older. However with taichi, you only get stronger when you get older. You will continue to get stronger even until the day you die. He also said it doesnt matter what style you learn as long as you learn it from a real master.

He then offered to teach us real taichi and said he will take us to the mountains in a week for a 3 day camping trip to show us the secrets of taichi.

After talking with Toshio for a few hours, we came back to the hotel and I am writing this email now. It is 5am and the sun is up. Time for bed.

I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings. We have plans to go to alikahabra, which is electric town. It has all the coolest gadgets in Japan and is apparently where ALL the schoolgirls go.