Even busier times

 I thought I was busy during the last week of July, but this first week and a half of August were even way busier! First I had a couchsurfer stay with me. A guy from Japan. He was a little shy, but really nice and respectful. I hang out with him on thursday and friday he was away all day exploring London before leaving late in the evening. Overall it was allright, but not as much fun as I'd hoped. I'll give it at least 1 more shot, but based off of this experience not likely something I'll do regularly.
It should still prove to be a good resource to meet people when I'm in Japan though!


Speaking about Japan:
三十日九月から七日十一月まで日本でいます！！！
わ食しか食べません。まてませんよ！
とても楽しみにしています！
Translation:
From the 30th of September till the 7th of November I'll be in Japan!!!
I'll eat nothing but Japanese food. I can't wait!
I'm very excited!

I've already booked my flight and have started planning my trip. There's still lots of planning to do, but it should be absolutely EPIC =) Cannot wait!!!

{MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE DARK KNIGHT RISES}

Then on monday I got to see the Dark Knight Rises in the BFI IMAX. The first time I went there since they've installed the brand new screen. It seemed even bigger than before, although I'm not sure how that's even possible, because it already was BY FAR the largest movie screen I had ever seen.
The Dark Knight Rises was great overall, but I was also very disappointed after all the hype. I personally thought it was the worst of the trilogy although not by much. Especially the last 20-30 minutes had a little tóó much drama imo and could not break loose from many hollywood cliché. Especially the happy ending felt very forced to me and I think it'd have been much better and more logical had Batman died. Oh well... the trailer for the new Superman movie looked really fucking badass! :) And The Hobbit should still be able to save us from another year without any good Hollywood movies.

Then on monday evening I took the Eurostar to spend Tuesday and a large part of Wednesday with my mom and my younger brother in Paris. I'll just show you the pictures.

 I think some sort of Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorial thing.

 They had this awesome place set up where people could come and watch the Olympics. Funny I had to come to Paris to actually enjoy some of the games.

Italian food in Paris' pretty good.

{I actually saved this first part as a draft about 3-4 weeks ago, but then never finished it.}


Then as I got back to London St. Pancras International Train Station, my younger sister(Daphne) was there, because she was staying with me in London for 2 days. I don't think I took any pictures, but we had some good food, did some shopping and a tiny bit of sightseeing. A good amount of fun and I'm glad she got to see my apartment before her year at uni started.

After Daphne's visit I had about a week of rest, before another couchsurfer came over. This time Akiko and her younger brother, Masato, visited me. Most of the pictures were taken by Masato. When he sends them to me I'll post a few in my blog. We did a ton of sightseeing and I basically spent all 3 days hanging out with them. It was lots of fun and because Masato's english was about as limited as my Japanese, I was forced to speak a little bit of Japanese. I still need lots more practice, but it's still good for your confidence to actually say a few sentences and have them be understood by locals! =)
Akiko also made Japanese Pasta for me which was really nice and very tasty! Her english was also 100% fluent, so it was a lot easier and more fun to talk to her than my first couchsurfer. Overall lots of fun and something I may do again in the future afterall. And definitely something I'll want to do in Japan at least once.

The week after that was a bit more quiet again. Got some good workouts in and focussed heavily on poker. HU had not been working out too well over the course of the summer, so decided to switch back to playing 6m PLO. After 1 week of lots of bad luck and running ~20BIs under EV, the 2 weeks since then have been great. While I haven't run above EV, I've definitely been very fortunate. Picked up nearly 100BIs in the 3/6 ante games(with some 2/4 and 5/10 aswell) over the past 2 weeks. The variance in those games is INSANE, but they're very interesting, enjoyable and profitable of course.

The first weekend of September, Martijn aka 'MartyParty de racecoureur' as I put him into my phone a few years ago, came to London. He's a high school friend from Holland I've known for nearly 10 years. He has an internship in London until Christmas and he's staying with untill then. He's been extremely busy so far. Not only having to work hard for his internship, but having to prepare for an art exhibition/show next week aswell.

I also had a few noteworthy dinners this September. First of all I ate Okonomiyaki for the first time in my life at Abeno. It's a japanese style fried Pancake. I really liked the atmosphere in the restaurant and it was great, except for the fact that they recommended we split one with 3 people. We could've all eaten one fairly easily. Anyway, it was still a very fun dinner. Here's the pictures:

Then last sunday, we randomly walked into a decent looking Japanese restaurant, called Toku. They had very friendly staff and the starters were good. So we ordered 1 of each roll, so we could all share them and try every single one. This is where the good turned bad and then ugly!

 Looks good, right?

 

That's what was left over... left over sushi? Yeah, pretty bad! None of us had ever not eaten sushi that we ordered, but these pieces of crap(can't even be called sushi) were just too sickening.

And here's the downright ugly! My friends were right for not wanting to try it simply based off of it's looks. I was like, "hey it's sushi, it's obviously good!!!", so I put the entire piece in my mouth in good faith. Well... that was a mistake. I had to gulp it away with soy sauce, that's how bad it tasted. Turned out this was a piece of sushi with melted cheese in it. GROSS!!!

There was another piece that tasted like the fish came from a tin can and a few others that were pretty pretty bad. Out of the 10 rolls I'd say 2-3 were edible, but fell in comparison to even most take-away sushi. About 5 were pretty bad and 2-3 were just simply gross. I don't know what the chef at this restaurant has been smoking, but I'm pretty sure he's never tasted his own sushi.

Since the last time I ate at McDonalds/Burger King about 5-6 years ago I've only eaten food worse than this on 1 occassion. That was at the infamous Garlic.

Ok I'm glad to have gotten that out of my system. Fortunately enough I also ate at Atari-Ya Swiss Cottage last week, with Gavin and Olivia when checking out their new awesome house they bought ~a month ago and I will be making a return trip to Sushi Tetsu this friday for most likely the best sushi of my life for a 2nd time.

I've also been extremely busy planning tons of things for my trip to Japan. In less than 2 weeks I'll be going to The Netherlands and then in less than 3 weeks I'll be in Japan. I've bought a Camera, backpack, booked more hotels, spent some time on couchsurfing, figured out how I will pay for things, bought tickets to the Studio Ghibli museum, bought a few Japanese Rail Passes and a bunch more stuff. I still have quite a few things to take care off like get an extended trip travel insurance from my bank and figure out a way to get Internet on my phone in Japan or at least a local SIM card to call with. May be hard, but hopefully I can figure out a way.

Last but not least I've watched a ton of new awesome movies I HAVE to mention! And a lot of not as awesome movies I won't bother mentioning. These are more or less ranked from worst to best, with worst being EPIC and best ones being in the top 10 movies I'll get to see this year. Here we go:

-Hotel Rwanda(2004)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0395169/
I'm sure you all know about. If not go be ashamed and watch it!

-Ddongpari(2008) {Korean}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1373120/

EPIC Movie!!! Some of the best acting I've ever seen combined with some of the best characters ever, make for a super intense movie.

-Jisatsu Sâkuru(2001) {Japanese}
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312843/

Fucking Awesome! I'll need to see it at least once more to figure it out. Lots of open questions and I just don't understand all of it. But I understand enough to love it. As always lots of humor from Shion Sono. And it seems like there's a lot of awesome messages in there. As mentioned don't quite understand them and need more watchings + more time to think about this movie. Overall definitely epic. And the first 5 minutes are W I L D!!!

-Survive Style 5+(2004) {Japanese}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430651/
One of the funniest movies I've ever seen!!! Laughed throughout almost all of the movie. At the end there was a part which I found a bit slow, but the rest is just simply super super funny!!! Ending is superfeelgood awesome too!! Just awesome!! Weird, completely totally different and above all hilarious!!! 

-Biyeolhan Geori(2006) {Korean}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0821442/
One of the best gangster movies ever. Has to be either this or Chingoo. Both WAY better than the Godfather movies. I loved the characters a lot. The main character is especially well done, so interesting and has so many sides. Is he a good or a bad guy? Tough question. Probably bad, but he's so likeable. Just awesome movie overall. Very very enjoyable.

-Kiraware Matsuku no isshô(2006) {Japanese}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0768120/

<3 <3 <3 Visually amazing!! Awesomely Musicalish!!! EPIC Poetry about life!!! <3 <3 <3

Just amazing movie!!! Absolutely LOVE it!!!

-Himizu(2011) {Japanese}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1900893/

I saw this yesterday and obsolutely LOVED it! What else can I say besides Shion Sono is a movie making GENIOUS and well on it's way to being my favorite director of all time. This guy knows how to make movies.

This one's really funny, with great acting and a solid plot and some cool connections with the Tsunami that hit Japan shortly before this movie was made. HIGHLY recommend it.

-Tsumetai nettaigyo(2010) {Japanese} 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632547/

The first 2 hours or so are very good, but nothing really spectacular. But then... but then. The last half hour consists of mostly ~5 scenes that each individually on their own would be some of the most ridiculous shit EVER in a movie. Together............................................... WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS MOVIE!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!

First 2 hours while it's quite good and contains many many hot girls, is not that outstanding. Last half hour though is insanely awesome!!!

-Nae Yeojachingureul Sogae Habnida(2004) {Korean}

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409072/

TOTAL BADASS amongst movies!!! First hour is perfect. The girl's acting/character is out of this world and the chemistry between the 2 leads is amazing.

The 2^nd half worked really well for me. At some point I guess I just accepted that it wasn't supposed to be 100% realistic. And I stopped caring about details. Nonetheless I felt like some things just didn't come together quite as well as they could've. And the ending is maybe a tad bit corny. I was still in tears though. Furthermore I have to mention the soundtrack. I'm pretty sure I've heard it before somewhere, but it is EPIC!!!

Did I mention the girl in this movie is A M A Z I N G? Definitely my favorite actress.

Last but not least I made a list on IMDB containing all currently 611movies I've ever seen with their ratings and the best ones with a short description aswell:

www.imdb.com/rg/s/3/list/Q38S75UMrrM/

Ok that's about it. Lengthy update, but it's been a while so I had a lot to talk about. Maybe 1 more small update before I'm off to Japan. When I'm in Japan I'll try updating every now and then with some delicious sushi pictures or nice japanese scenery.

Frank.