173 - Farewell Party

From left to right: Me (Budapest, Hungary), Jamie (Cambridge, UK), Thomas (San Francisco, CA)

Thanks everybody for coming out tonight to say goodbye the last time with a couple of beers, tons of sashimi, crazy-ass wasabi-sake, kombini power session, nomihodai karaoke madness, ultimate dancing fever, waking me up at the club, and sprinting away from juu-man-en bill. *

So all you fine buddies and dudes and mates, thank you very much for spending your time and experiences with me, I'll never forget you:

Zaki, Zoli, Milosz, Thimo, Felix, Tomi, Yasir, Javier, Matthieu, Melissa, Barry, Jamie, Thomas (in chronological order)

Make sure you contact me whenever you are near Hungary, you are all really welcome to stay at our house (we got an extra guest room).


* And thanks in advance for the HR people for calling me back for the second round even though they read this post about all the crazy things I do when partying. ;-)

172 - Waka-Sensei Fujimoto Harutaka

Seven dan on picture (not exactly uniformly distributed though)
Just compare his stance with mine, and you will see how great the space is for development.

171 - No, We Didn't Actually Try The Restaurant...

170 - Riddle

Let's see who can find out what this weird thing is... Hints all over the site.

169 - Neko

168 - Ready To Roll Out

Part of the Toshiba Ninja Kame members ready to hit Tokyo. From left to right:
Derek (Hong Kong/Canada)
Felix (China)
Melissa & Matthieu (France)
Thomas (US)
Javier (Well guess)

Shibuya, Harajuku, Yoyogi koen, made wonderful pictures, and guess what , I won't show 'em.

Plug: Make sure you check out Felix's Picasa albums, they are AMAZING. He's a hobbyist with some huge lenses, and all sort of tricks producing postcard quality pictures. And the greatest - he licenses his photos under Creative Commons, so you can use his pictures on your blog, or whatever, just make sure you write his name and link his albums! Yeah, and you shouldn't sell them!

167 - Kamakura Beach

Nice Saturday with sunbathing, and watching surfers struggle in those teeny-tiny waves.

Sidenote: Any beach I visit in Japan is full of jarheads. Okinawa is packed with these US bases, and in Yokosuka, which is just near Kamakura, there's a US Navy base as well.

166 - Surreal Street

And I didn't even use Photoshop. My camera behaves weirdly sometimes, amplifying the light from the dark sky, making the otherwise hardly visible clouds stand out sharply..

165 - Tools

Tools we use in order to achieve Real Ultimate Power. The blue tin can is filled with concrete, and was said to be used by Fujimoto sensei to strengthen his fingertips (nukite). I have never seen this, I think he practices shuto techniques with it (edge of hand), nukite sounds way too difficult.

164 - The Reason Why I'm Always Late

...is actually not the queue you have to stand in to take the bus
, I just needed a title. I simply oversleep.

163 - Yoshinoya

Fast food in Japan doesn't necessarily mean McD's. Yoshinoya is a very popular chain selling gyuudon, and other similar ball dishes (rice and some meat). It's quite okay, and way better for your health compared to a good old Big Mac.

162 - Shodan

So this day I received my actual black belt. It has my name on it, as well as Shoubukai embroidered.

161 - D'oh! We're leaving already?!

And the next day: Toshiba ...
Note how nice the weather is now that we are leaving.

160 - Beach fo' Real

Now that's a real beach, even though you can't see the sand on the photo. We found it on Google Maps satellite map! Technology Über Alles! Few years ago you had to ask actual people for stuff like this (well we did, but they didn't know)

Zoli has some better pictures (including nice booties)