So dance already!

Below are the dance videos that I put on my link list. They're all from youtube. The ballet videos are first, bien sur, and then the hip hop/jazz/modern stuff.

Some of them are ballet, some of them are other types of dance, I consider all of them either really beautiful or really fun or both. So the moral of the story? DANCE!!


Her feet and arches are amazing. I don't understand how her feet don't just pop in two. It takes a while for the music and dancing to start, but it's worth the wait.


I love how she incorporates the fan into the dance and uses it to make sounds. Plus, she's just a beautiful dancer.


Pay close attention right at the beginning - the guy is flying! Look how high he gets in his jumps!


This is my favorite part of the movie "Center Stage." This dance was choreographed by Susan Stroman, who directed and choreographed "The Producers." I love how she incorporates classical techniques into contemporary pop music. This is unexpected and unusual in ballet, but I really love when it happens.


The final 4 dance Wade Robson's choreography to "Sexy Back." One of the most exciting dances from Season 2 of "So You Think You Can Dance"!


Destini and Jamile's AWESOME hip hop from Season 1 of "So You Think..." I was at the studio for this taping and the energy was amazing! The audience was going CRAZY! Even better than what you could see on TV.


The judges comments after this Mia Michael's dance were right on. When I saw this episode, I was really blown away by the choreography and concept and how Heidi and Travis danced it. Really beautiful. Also from Season 2 of "So You Think..."


The best part of this dance is around the middle when the music suddenly changes and they both hit the movement at just the right time and with just the right energy. It's unexpected, that makes it touching and great. Also from Season 2 of "So You Think..."

I tried to find some Tahitian to include on this list, but I couldn't find a good video from YouTube. I'll keep looking and will post when I find one.

Joyeux annif... a moi!

So this past Saturday, I celebrated my "18th" birthday. Yes, that's what I said - EIGHTEENTH birthday. You gotta problem with that?? For anyone who asked me how old I was turning that night, my response was a very serious "Juu-has-sai!" ("18!"). If you don't already know how old I am, then you're not going to find out here. But, suffice it to say, I'm old enough to start wanting to lie about my age. So, there. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Moving on to the gory details of my 18th-th (get it?) birthday party:

By the end of last week, I still hadn't been able to decide on where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do for my Saturday night, 18th-th birthday celebration, so I told everyone - Joanne, Yuko, Mac, and Kazumi, who are quickly becoming the usual suspects, as well as Mac's friend, George - to meet at the Hachiko statue in Shibuya. Hachiko's story is a cool one that I'm sure I'll explain in more detail in some later post, but if you're dying to know what it's all about right now, just click here for an idea. This picture of Hachiko and Friend was a serendipitous meeting of iron and fluffiness - too cute! Plus, a good omen for the fun night we were about to embark on.

We started off at an izakaya, which is basically a restaurant where the primary activity is drinking rather than eating. I dutifully took my "tired liver" pills - pills that help us red-faced asians drink without feeling the effects of the alcohol so quickly and thus avoiding "tired liver syndrome" - and proceeded to drink my first of the pitifully small number of drinks that I would consume that night (considering that we had 2 Brits in our group and only 2.5 Japanese plus 0.5 Americans and 1 Canadian, you can bet the Brits out drank the rest of us by at least a 200-to-1 ratio, though my figures may be just a bit off). My very kind and very fluent in Japanese Japanese friends helped me and the other veg in the group to not only find one thing to eat at the izakaya, but several things to eat! I tried yuba - a tofu dish that has a yummy flavor and an interesting texture - for the first time and it was super tasty. Not surprisingly - and quite happily - tofu was featured very prominently in this meal - we had tofu dip and veggie chips, black bean tofu and plain tofu, tofu skin (yuba) - um, is anyone else having a Bubba Gump shrimp moment, here? The waiter was pretty nervous though very attentive - I don't think he's ever had so many gaijin at one table.

I think I actually managed to have 2 drinks over the course of that two-hour meal and one of the other Japanese girls had one - we were already way behind the Brits, one of whom even handicapped his skills by starting late and still gained on us by the end of the first quarter.

1st quarter scores:

2.5 Japanese = 3 drinks (However, all 3 were fruity and thus had a penalty result of counting as only 2 drinks.)
0.5 American = not drinking, left it up to the 0.5 Japanese who had the advantage of tired liver pills
1 Canadian = 2 drinks
2 Brits = 1000 beers/lagers/ales/whatever - they're all the same to me. And I quote myself, "They're all varying degrees of terrible."

After our lovely meal - my second ever visit to an izakaya - we moved on to what else... karaoke!! Before I left California, my friend Norma (of Los Cabos fame), helped to get me back in touch with my inner lounge singer and we did several hours of karaoke back-to-back, just the two of us, on a Saturday afternoon/evening. It was perfect training for my reintroduction back into the Japanese karaoke industry. I sang everything from Mariah Carey to Kelly Clarkson, from Mr. Big to 4 Non-Blondes (I said Hey!!) to the only Japanese pop song (J-Pop) to which I know almost all of the words, "First Love" by my girl, Utada Hikaru (whose mother was recently arrested in Las Vegas for trying to bring a drug-laced $400,000 in cash onto a plane to NYC - she was taking the money to a charity... that's her story and she's stickin' to it). Mac gave further evidence of his transformation from a run-of-the-mill British guy to a sugar sweet Japanese girl. As he declared that night, he lives in this country therefore he knows nearly all J-Pop songs and he'll sing them to you to prove it. Joanne, who has previously claimed to not dance and not sing, eventually gave into both actvities as we non-Brits collectively strove to keep pace in drinks and songs in the hotly contested 2nd quarter.

2nd quarter scores:

2.5 Japanese = 2 drinks, though again fruity, so take into account penalties; also, at this point, only 0.5 of the Japanese were drinking as one of them doesn't drink at all and the other maxed out at 1 drink at the izakaya.
0.5 American = 1 drink, taking up the slack for the 0.5 Japanese - why are the Americans always coming in and taking over for the Japanese??
1 Canadian = 2 drinks? The American was in charge of tracking drinks, but you know how much attention America pays to what's going on with Canada...
2 Brits = 2,542 beers/lagers/ales/whatever

Going into the 3rd quarter, we lost one of our partyers to the last train home. The rest of us had decided to valiantly carry on until Sunday morning's first train. So, what's a group in the mood to dance to do at midnight on a Saturday in Shibuya, one of Tokyo's centers of nightlife, a neighborhood that has dozens of clubs and bars and karaoke clubs and lounges?? Well, go back to the same place they'd gone for the previous two weekends, of course! My new personal favorite: GasPanic!! Yes, GasPanic!! I really did only recently discover this, um, diamond in the rough even though I've known about it for over 6 years. The first time I read that name 6 years ago when I was living in Tokyo, I thought to myself two things: 1) That is such an awful name, I'll never go there, it makes me think of bathroom emergencies, and 2) With a name like that, it'll never last. Lo! Hold! Here we are, over 6 years later, and not only has that place lasted and expanded into a chain of 5 bars in various locations around Tokyo, but I have have gone there the past three weekends in a row and decided it's my favorite bar in Shibuya (the best of combinations: cheap drinks, free entry, mostly hip-hop and R&B music for dancing, and a 65-year-old salaryman who is a regular customer and tries to dress like a thug even though his pants are pulled up high enough that you can see his white socks very easily under the club's blacklights). Things that make you go "Hmmm."















We spent the next thousand years, oh, no, wait, I mean, FIVE hours mingling and dancing, dancing and mingling, drinking some more - the Brits were so securely in the lead that the 0.5 Japanese and 0.5 American who were still in the race eventually conceded the Brits' victory - and shaking our booties "Crazy in Love" style. Pictured above you see, from left, Random yet Peaceful Drunk Guy, George (a Brit, as you can tell by the beer in his hand), Me, Joanne, and Mac (no beer pictured, but may have been during a time-out). This photo is courtesy of George. I didn't want to bring out my fancy-schmancy new camera for my 18th-th birthday party as I don't have a proper case for it yet and I didn't want it to get ruined. So, here you see the only evidence of this important night. 18 is great!

Unfortunately, I didn't keep up my energy as much as I'd have liked. This is mainly due to the really boring conversation I had with one random drunk person as well as the temporary switch to - though permanently party-killing - techno music. Once the DJ started spinning techno, I was done for and spent the last hour or so standing by the door getting fresh air and debating with the security guards the pros and cons of whether or not to apply for a bartending job at GasPanic - both of them gave a resounding "No!" response - as well as discussing the lack of facilities for the disabled at Japanese public schools with a couple of English teachers. By the end of the "evening", I was so tired that I made sure to be on the VERY FIRST train home, at precisely 5am. It was a pleasant ride though not nearly as entertaining as the 5-ish train home that I took last weekend.

3rd quarter scores:
1.5 Japanese = 0 drinks, all players out of the game
0.5 American = 2 drinks, took over entirely for the Japanese
1 Canadian = 2 maybe 3 drinks, but same tabulation problem as in 2nd quarter
2 Brits = unknown quantities of substances of unknown origins

There was no 4th quarter, because, as I like to say, I didn't go to math college.

My 18th-th birthday was a blast! I had lots of fun, got great gifts, solidified friendships through the international language of karaoke and booty-shakin', made new acquaintances through the international language of Japanglish, and got to taste yuba. Does it get any better than this?!?! I think not, my friend. I think not.

Though, next time I'm going to recruit a naturalized-American Russian to drink for the American team.

A different kind of turkey-less Thanksgiving

So, once again, I have spent Thanksgiving without eating turkey. However, this year was significant in that it was turkeyless not for my having declined turkey, but for not having had any turkey around to decline. Although I've spent other Thanksgivings away from home and even away from America, this was my first "uncelebrated" Thanksgiving. In fact, one time when I was in France for Thanksgiving, I had not one turkey around, but actually about TEN roasted chickens, thanks to a language miscommunication with my German friend. We also had all the other trimmings that traditionally accompany the turkey.

I can't say that I miss the smell of a giant roasting bird in the house Thanksgiving morning, but it has been a pretty unremarkable, thankless day. I guess maybe I should've at least made some mashed potatoes, gravy, and a can of corn as a token effort. But, by coincedence, it was a national holiday here in Japan too and I couldn't be bothered to go through the trouble of putting together that meal for one - not to mention that without a handmixer (electric or otherwise), it'd be pretty hard for me to mash potatoes.

Actually, I do have one thing to be thankful for: I'm thankful that I pinched my mom's DVD of the BBC's "Pride & Prejudice" so that I had something great to watch today because it was perfect movie-watching, bumming-around, vegging-out weather. This is one of the reasons that living in a place with seasons is great - you get days that basically demand that you do nothing but watch movies and be - haha - thankful for a good excuse to not be productive. I will study Japanese a little later, but had a good day avoiding it. :)

Anyway, to all my American friends and family at home or abroad, hope you have/had a fantastic Mashed Potatoes Day! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Ben takes a picture of himself everyday...

The following is a video of stills of a guy who takes a picture of himself everyday. At least, that's how it starts. Plus, I like the music - very soothing.

This hasn't got anything to do with Tokyo, but, not everything does, right?

If you love the music on the video too (by Jesse Novak), then click here to get to the page to download it. The webpage is the mp3 file. When you get to the page, go to file>save>my music and then hit "save". Easy-peasy! Enjoy!

Shinjirarenai - An existential (not really) exploration of Tokyo (nightlife)

There are few words in the Japanese language sufficient to explain the culminating event of my past Saturday night/Sunday morning in the lovely and charming village of Tokyo. In fact, there are so few words to describe such a rare event as this, that probably every Japanese person who sees the following blog entry (or hears my story through broken Japanese or in totally normal English) will utter the same word: "Shinjirarenai."

The first time I heard this word was a few weeks ago. It was used repeatedly by a friend of mine, until I finally asked, "What the heck does shinjirarenai mean?" Basically, it means "Unbelieveable." It was explained to me at the time that shinjirarenai is only really used with positive things, as in, "Wow, that octopus sashimi was soooo good, it's amazing. Shinjirarenai!" (I completely made up that example sentence, so I'm not really sure how close it is to actual usage, but I figure there will only be so many chances for my vegetarian self to mention octopus sashimi in this blog, so I went for it.) However, I have since heard the word used on the news by a woman discussing North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan, people actually abducted right from the street and kidnapped to North Korea by North Korean government agents - not so unbelieveably good as much as unbelieveably bad. So, for the time being, we gaijin/hafu are debating the true meaning of this truly Japanese word. We'll be alerting the Japanese-English Dictionary Writers Association as soon as we've made our determination.

Anyway, when I witnessed this event on the first-ish train home Sunday morning, around 5:30 am (p.s. I did my first all-nighter club-hopping in Shibuya on Saturday - lots of fun, lots of dancing, very tiring), the VERY FIRST WORD that came to mind was: Shinjirarenai!! Big time. Like, maybe one of the best real-life demonstrations of the word's meaning. Seriously.

Are you dying to know what I'm talking about yet?!?!? You wanna know what the event was, right?!?! Okaaaaay...








But first, let me recount my Japanese teacher's reaction when I told her about this event. As chance and technology and Japan and Japanese technology and Japanese technological chance would have it, my cell phone is also equipped with a 3 megapixel digital camera, so I was able to collect evidence - yes, photographic evidence - of this amazing event. Bigfoot hunters should be so lucky. In any case, upon showing my teacher this photo, the first word out of my teacher's mouth was... not shinjirarenai. Rather, it was a more commonly used word: uso! This basically means, "NO WAY!" or "YOU'RE JOKING!" or "YOU LIAR!", depending on the situation. Here, please reference the first meaning.

The second word out of my teacher's mouth was... Shinjirarenai!! No kidding. I'm not uso-ing. How awesome is that?!

Okay, so you wanna know what the event was? It was frickin' amazing. Super funny. Probably (I hope) a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Here it is:




No teasing this time...




Just keep scrolling...




Patience is a virtue...




The suspense of it all!!!





Ta-daaaaa!!!

He's not just asleep - his pants are around his ankles, people!! Look down!! Can you believe it?!?! Shinjirare - frickin' - nai!! (Or as they might say it in Californialand, "Shin - ji - ra - re - nai!" à la Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Oh - my - god, Becky, look at her butt...")

Allow me to elucidate what you are seeing on the screen.

As you can probably imagine, the first-ish trains home on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night out in one of Tokyo's main nightlife areas (Shibuya - click for picture) are basically full of drunk people and the maintenance workers who clean up after them (if you know what I mean). So, the good, the bad, and the tipsy, pile into the trains and, as many Japanese commuters are wont to do even when sober, promptly pass out and sleep soundly until they reach their stations. By the way, I was not one of the bad or the tipsy. 100% sober and, thus, fully able to appreciate the above scene. I've been laughing for the last 36 hours about it. Seriously. People are going to start thinking I'm the crazy one because I keep randomly chuckling to myself as I walk down the street.

In continuation... The man you see here got on the train at the same time as me and rather than taking a seat - there were many available - decided to stand up - at the time, fully clothed. Maybe 10 minutes into the ride, after having shot a picture of some drunk people to my right, I happened to look to my left, when I spotted the above scene. I literally did a double take. At some point in the ride, the guy's pants had completely fallen down. I started to chuckle, thought to myself, "Shinjirarenai," then looked away. I really wanted to take a picture, but I wasn't sure if I should. Was this a common sight on first trains? I didn't know. Should I be laughing so obviously? Was I offending people by laughing? Then I decided to forget all that and take the damn picture. I mean, Hello! How often do you see something like this ANYWHERE in the world, least of all super-clean, super-neat, super-law-abiding Tokyo?!?! So I set my camera on my knee for balance and to frame the shot (I even zoomed in a bit) and got my once-in-a-lifetime picture. Then I heard the click of someone else's phone camera. And more chuckles. By this point, most people around me had noticed the guy and we were all making funny faces at each other, like, "Wow, this is so shinjirarenai!" I guess it's not commonplace on first trains.

After a couple of seconds, though, I started to feel bad for the guy. Poor thing was really out of it and had no idea that people were sitting around laughing at his free show. So, knowing that most likely no one else would be willing to help this guy out, I got up and tried to wake the guy up. I literally had to push his shoulder a couple of times and shout “Sumimasen! Sumimasen!” to get him to open his eyes. When he finally gained some sort of awareness and opened his eyes, I pointed down to his pants. He looked down and went right back to sleep. Well, I'd tried. I sat back down. He woke up again for a second and looked up at me, so I shouted, “Mite! Mite!” ("Look! Look!"), and pointed down. He eventually looked down, realized that his pants were down, pondered what that meant for a couple more seconds, pulled up his pants, and got off the train. Hopefully he was too drunk to remember what was probably the most embarrassing thing to happen to him in his entire life.

At least he was wearing underwear.

Is it something in the water?

I saw this girl on a TV show in a ramen and ochazuke competition. She ate 13 bowls of ramen and about 50 bowls of ochazuke! I don't know how it's possible for her to stay so small! Her website says she weighs 38 kilos - less than 100 pounds!!

Honestly, this is pee in your pants hilarious.

I found this on a weird website. It probably won't be too funny to you if you don't understand a little bit of Japanese, but for those of you who do, you will die laughing. It's a rap video by gaijin! But they're rapping in Japanese!!! "Hai, doozo!! "

JapanaHallowhata?

I finally have some time to elaborate on my super cool Halloween pics and videos.

The story begins a few weeks ago...

Okay, to be honest, I can't remember how the story starts. I forget now how it began exactly, but, basically, one day, a few weeks ago, I read somewhere about this crazy event that happens every year, organized solely by word-of-mouth, and attended mostly by Tokyo's gaijin population. The article (or whatever it was that I read) said that every year on the Saturday before Halloween, gaijin from all over the city gather (in costume!) at a specific train station on the Yamanote line - a circle line train that literally circles the city. So I did a Google search and found this:

Saturday, October 28
JR Shinjuku station, platform 13 (Yamanote bound for Ikebukuro)
Meet where car 10 stops, in front of the escalator from South exit
Everyone boards the 21:07 northbound train and loops around clockwise
BYOB, or better yet, whisky

Several things about this caught my attention and/or occured to me:

First, this just sounds crazy!

Second, this sounds like sooooo much fun!!

Third, Tokyo/Japanese trains are unlike trains in most other countries. They're neat, clean, quiet places, where, even when the train is literally, no exaggeration, bursting at the seams, people don't really talk or do anything loud or strange other than sit quietly or sleep (I'm talking totally zonked out, so that's kind of strange, but still quiet) until they arrive at their station and de-train. Now, imagine boarding the train in a pirate costume, complete with hook and beard.

Fourth, at any given time, the most gaijin you'd probably see in any one train car, costumed or otherwise, is maybe 5-10, even from stations in the most gaijin of gaijin areas in Tokyo. So, basically, even one gaijin (wearing regular clothes) stands out in a train car. Now imagine tens of gaijin not only together in one car, but wearing costumes!! I couldn't imagine how many people would be showing up for this, but I figured there'd at least be a good group going if we were all agreeing to meet up at a particular car.

So, I did my part and started to spread the word to pretty much everyone I met. I've managed to find a couple of friends since I've been here, so I told everyone I know (about 5 people) and told them to tell their friends, so on and so on. Ultimately three of my friends and one of the girl's friends and one of his friends (on holiday from England!) ended up coming with me - a very "word-of-mouth" group! We all did our best to wrangle up costumes at the last minute and agreed to meet for the 9:07pm train.

Saturday the 28th finally arrived. My friend Yuko and I met up with my friend Kazumi and her friend Mac and his friend Tim for dinner before the fateful voyage and made our way to Platform 13, Car 10 from there. We didn't see anyone else in costume in the station "lobby" - a huge, completely chaotic place - and, regardless, we were pretty much all in regular clothes at that point - though Mac had worn his "Batman" shirt all day in honor of the holiday. As we climbed to the top of the stairs for Platform 13, there was no noticeable commotion or party-noise coming from above . I worried: Would we be the only ones who'd shown up?!?!














Hardly!! When we reached the top of the stairs, there were lots of small, quiet groups of costumed gaijin all over the platform. It was about 8:55 at this point, so still more than 10 minutes until the train we were waiting for would depart. We put our masks/headbands on and set out to search for my friend Joanne. As we moved farther and farther down the platform, closer to the end, the more costumes we saw. Finally, the motherlode: Car 10! There were people dressed in costume everywhere!!

We found my friend Joanne and prepared our cameras. The energy was definitely rising, but people were still being fairly quiet. Next train: 9:02. The suspense! I asked one bewildered looking gaijin, "What are you supposed to be?" He said, "I don't know. I just left my office." "So, you're an Office Worker then," I suggested. Just a couple more minutes. I snapped pics while we were waiting and just generally gawked at people.

Finally, 9:07!!! The train we had all been waiting for pulled up. As soon as the doors opened and passengers started to exit the train, costumed (and probably slightly tipsy) gaijin stormed the train, "Woo-ing" and cheering as frightened and unsuspecting commuters attempted to disembark - hopefully with their sanity in tact. The energy and the fun didn't stop the whole way around. In fact, as you may have noticed in one of the videos, at one point as the train got closer to finishing its circle, people started calling out and repeating back the names of station. As in: "When I say 'Hara,' you say, 'Juku!' 'Hara!' 'Juku!'" In between stops, we would run from car to car, door to door, mixing the party up and seeing all the costumes - there was even someone with an eggplant costume!! We even had a visit from the train cops - twice. Once, they were verifying that a camera crew was permitted to film (they weren't, I think, because they didn't last much longer after that). The second time, the cops were actually persuaded to pose for pictures with two of the revelers!

When the circle ended, we disembarked with all the other costumed people. The platform was buzzing for maybe a minute, but by the 2-minute mark, it was completely back to normal! It was surreal. Like nothing had happened! We were the only costumes left! We had waited around to see if the party continued somewhere, but everyone just kind of faded into the chaotic mass that is Shinjuku station.

We decided to head to Kabukicho, the bar/late night area around the station. But, when a couple of us tried to exit the turnstiles, we were blocked - our tickets didn't work. Uh-oh... what if we got in trouble for participating in the party?! So, still masked (I know, dumb), we proceeded to the ticket attendant, showed him our tickets (he'd seen us get blocked), he took a quick look, and then gave us our money back!!

Yes, you read that right: Not only had we just had an hour and ten minutes of some of the most unique fun to be had in Tokyo, but it had been FREE! FREE!!

So, there's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I hope you've enjoyed this little taste of Halloween Tokyo Gaijin Style (way better than Halloween Paris Etranger Style, by the way). I'm sure there are things I'm leaving out, but if I gave you every last detail of what I do here and all the fun there is to be had in Tokyo-land, what motivation would you ever have to come visit me ?

See ya... on the other side! (Remember my planned catch phrase? Well, I've decided to start actually using it.)



p.s. Here's the link for the pics again, if you want to check them out.

Tokyo Halloween

The Ghost of Halloween Past