I recently moved countries for a 2nd time in 2 years. Originally Dutch, I spent 2 years in London as a Professional Poker Player, but am now starting anew yet again as an Entrepreneur in Tokyo, Japan. Read about my Life in Japan, Trips throughout Asia, various Business Ventures, Amazing Food, Fitness and the occassional Poker Session and Movie Review.
Since I had bought all the important furniture I needed, I was finally able to start work as an entrepreneur. I recently read an extremely good book aimed at entrepreneurs, a few of which tips increased my productivity by a LOT. Especially the To-Do-List recommended by the book has helped me a lot. I've already been using a To-Do-List for quite a while, but this one is much more useful and organized.
A To-Do-List is a list with all the things you need to do for the day. Here's an example of what mine looked like last Tuesday.
The Art of the Hustlerと言う本なんだけど、興味があれば、このサイトに行った方が良いと思う。
The book is called The Art of the Hustler. If you're interested check out this website.
This week I finished the design of my mobile application, contacted various companies and started discussing the options of the application's development with them. I hope to start development by the end of next week. Furthermore, I created my own Twitter and Facebook page. If you're interested, please give me a like or follow me. I'm posting regular updates about entrepreneurial things, news in Japan, various funny things and some things about what's going on in my own life.
On top of that I did a few others things this week like, going to Asakusa and Tokyo Sky Tree, going to an aquarium and going to a fireworks show. Japanese fireworks are WAY WAY better than western fireworks by the way!
マグロってなかなか大きいでしょ！
Tuna are pretty big, eh!
Wait till you see the Grande Finale!
何と言う音か知ってると、教えてください！ If you know the name of this song, please tell me!
グランドフィナーレ！！！ Grande Finale!!!
来年女の子と一緒に行きたいなー！素敵なデートである気がするんだ！ ^^
Seems like a great place for a date, so I'll aim for that next year! ^^
SO much has happened in the past 4 months, which helps to explain why I didn't update in so long. To be honest, another part of it was that I realized that the longer I postponed updating my blog, the longer it would take to update it. Nonetheless, here goes!
For the rest of April I was mostly extremely busy studying Japanese. I studied for about 6 hours a day for 3 weeks missing maybe 1-2 days. At this point in time I also became very busy deciding whether I wanted to move to Japan permanently or not. I knew that if I was going to decide to move I had to do it as soon as possible, because there'd be a lot of things to take care of. I don't even remember what was holding me back, but part of it was the language. I had always liked studying and talking Japanese, but to say I'm anywhere close to fluent would be a flat out lie. In the end though, I realized that I possesed more than Japanese skills to live in Japan and thus I shouldn't worry too much. Just study here and there and eventually I'll get fluent over time. I have no doubt that I'll eventually be able to get there. Having decided I'd move permanently, I went to search for an immigration lawyer.
During this time period I also did a couple fun things. First of all I went to a research institute of a friend that held an open day. They had a not-so-mini mini particle accelerator which was very impressive, they showed off a number of cool experiments, I got my picture taken with the discoverer of element 113(if I remember correctly) and one of the top 10 yo-yo'ers in the world gave a sick demonstration! Here's some pictures and videos!
Massive machinery!
Danger!
My Friend, the Genius and I
SO many wires!
Yo-Yo Champion
How is that possible?!?!?
Upside down aswell?!?
How Japanese people learn English
Wedding between a Japanese girl and some foreign guy at the Meiji Shrine
Making new friends at an art gallery
Writing Kanji
And of course I ate a TON of food!
Almost daily sushi lunch
Tsukemen Ramen
Tsukemen Ramen
Unagi
Best Tonkatsu ever!
One of Tokyo's best Soba restaurants. The Tenpura there was SICK!
After having decided I'd move to Japan, I found myself a lawyer. I've met with him a bunch of times for various reasons. First of all he set up my company in Japan, since then he's been working on my Visa, which should take another 4 weeks or so from now.
After that I started looking for an apartment. After doing some research I decided I definitely wanted to live in Ikebukuro, preferably West-Ikebukuro. I walked into a random real-estate agent and asked them to help me out. I was shown a lot of apartments, here's a selection of pictures.
Bit small...
Better!
Sick view on the 32nd floor!
Even bigger.
SICK living room, too bad I disliked the rest of the apartment.
Eventually I ended up going with the 2nd one, deciding that was the best value for money. The negotiating process was quite hard though. My application ended up being rejected, even though I showed them all the money in my bank accounts, more than enough to cover the rent for years AND I offered to pay the entire 2 years rent up front! Nonetheless, they wouldn't have me for some weird reason. Probably because I didn't want to pay for a guarantor company... I don't really see the point if I pay 2 years up front... STRANGE!
Before spending a few weeks in Europe to sell furniture in London and take care of some final things before leaving, I went to my friend's awesome hairsalon and took a few pictures of one of my favorite views in the world, a certain spot in Shibuya.
Not only is the hairsalon very nice, she's SUPERskilled at cutting hair too! (^_^)
After that in the middle of June it was off to the Netherlands and London for a bit. First up was London, where I stayed with my pro poker player friends for 2 weeks. Sadly enough I somehow injured my knee doing nothing on the very first day, which severely limited my mobility. Nonetheless I had a blast staying with them. We had a lot of good meals, played a lot of Wonders(amazing boardgame!) and in general caught up and hang out a bunch. I also took care of my furniture and had my PC and 30" monitor shipped to Japan. I surprisingly enough also got excited to play some poker again and won a decent bit of money during my stay in London, which was a nice bonus!
After 2 weeks in London there was about 1 week left in the Netherlands. I continued rehabbing my knee which was still far from 100%, I relaxed a lot with my family, saw a few friends and prepared for the move to Japan.
It was really good to see my friends and family in Europe, but at the same time I definitely realized that except for those connections there's not a lot left in Europe that interests me. There's not nearly enough to do and the food is way too bad in Holland. In London on the other hand, I just don't like the overall atmosphere/vibe of the city and the people all that much. So all in all, I'm very confident I've made the right decision to move to the other side of the world!
About a week or 2 into July when I got back to Japan, my main priority was getting a place of my own as soon as possible. Unfortunately at this point in time I heard that the application to the other apartment had fallen through and thus I took a look at 2 new apartments. This time in East-Ikebukuro. One of them I liked a lot and I decided to apply for that one instead.
The next week I met with the landlord in person. He turned out to be a really friendly businessman and superimpressed with my Japanese ability. I actually did most of the house searching process on my own in Japanese. He was extremely friendly and seemed genuinely excited to have me live in his apartment! That's my kind of landlord!
Unfortunately enough I did hear it'd take another week or 2 before I could move in, which meant being stuck in the tiny hotel room I had moved into after staying with friend for a week for a while longer. I spent most of my time preparing for the move-in.
Last week on the 1st of August it was finally move-in day! Unfortunately enough the apartment was still COMPLETELY empty. And by completely, I really mean completely. No fridge, no bed, no lamps, no curtains, no microwave, no furniture, no nothing. Which meant a lot of work was to be done. I got to it straight away and have worked about 14 hours a day since then. After a few days, on Monday, I had most of it done. The last few days I've been busy getting organized, finishing details and even some preparations for the getting back to the gym, getting back into a routine of studying Japanese and making some preparations for my businesses.
I actually have an idea for a 2nd business aswell now, although a smaller business. The first one will be a mobile application on which I'll get properly started within a few days. As far as the apartment goes, I'm only missing lights, curtains, a bed and a laundry machine right now. The laundry machine and the bed will arrive within a few hours though, so it's really only curtains and lights that I still need to go after.
What it looked like on Saturday
1-2 hours later
What it looks like right now!
Nighttime balcony view!
I want to use the currently empty living room as a theater room and put a projector in there and a nice couch etc. It will take me a little while longer before I get to that though, because I still have a TON of stuff to do! So I better get back at it.
Frank
P.S. Also check out the AWESOME restaurants I went recently when 2 poker player friends visited me in Tokyo.
http://tokyofoodjournal.blogspot.jp/
