I was excited about grappling this very special burger tonight. It’s style, known as the “Kobe Beef Style”, is known around the world.
It was a fluid, technical roll. Near perfect technique, relaxed, no ego. This burger was highly skilled with movement as sharp and precise as a samurai sword.
This was the first brown belt I have grappled with in the amazing around-the-world burger project. Well done, Japan!!
There were no BJJ burgers in Taitung. I asked around, and one place, I found someone who wanted to grapple with me. It had never trained BJJ, but came from a strange self invented Sambo/Judo/Combat Grappling background. Despite not knowing such basic BJJ positions as “beef” or “lettuce”, it handled itself very well in sparring. Surviving on strong base, good physique and natural athletic abilities, it actually gave me a pretty hard time on the mats.
I complimented it for it’s game, and even though it didn’t do BJJ specifically, I awarded it the rank of white belt four stripes. Almost cheating, but it was very impressive and the locals told me it was the only guy in town to grapple with.
Yesterday, I went to a no-gi class at AACC. About 25 people were there and I had lots of good rolls with many good guys. Really getting to practice my Icelandic guillotine these days :)
On the other mat, Abe-San was running a wrestling class. It was super tough and had some seriously skilled guys there. Two hours of hardcore training, it was very inspiring to watch, will definitely take some things home from that for my own wrestling classes at home. I tried to concentrate about my own training, but couldn’t stop watching the other mat all the time :D
I have moved to Abe-San’s apartment, conveniently located right next to the AACC gym. He invited me to come see the DEEP 53 show. Japanese MMA has seen a quite significant decline since over the last five years, it is nowhere near the heights of the Pride days. DEEP is a small show where fighters are build up. There was some very good fights in between but also some pretty bad ones.
Lots of respect between the fighters!
The first real MMA video I ever saw was “Choke” about Rickson Gracie fighting in Japan in 1995. One of the opponents were Yuki Nakai, the japanese Shooto champion. Being greatly outweighed by his opponents, and with sustaining a serious eye injury, he still managed to fight his way to the finals, where he ultimately was beaten by Rickson Gracie. His fighting spirit and courage won him a lot of fans world wide, including a young, danish teenage boy, who at that time just had found the interest for the exciting world of grappling and MMA.
He retired from MMA after that tournament and dedicated his time to learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Yesterday, I visited his gym and had the honor of training with him and his team. It was a very cool experience, he was super nice and funny. Very interested in my trip.
I came at a technique class starting 6:30. There was only two other people there, so it was basically a private. We worked on some nice details on how to break the lockdown and pass halfguard. Good stuff I had never seen before.
Sparring started at 20:00 and went on till about midnight. People only showed up for the sparring really. About 25-30 people came and left during that period. The level was really high and everyone were super nice and friendly. I rolled with many black belts and brown belts. There were also some very game blue and purples. I ended up rolling for a few hours, before I called it a night.
After training, I felt so good. Endorphine rush like crazy. I can’t wait to do that again, what an experience!
When I got back, Ryan took me out for some super good and very interesting Japanese food. We had some strange stuff, my favorite being raw horse sushi :D
There has also been two earthquakes while I have been here. One was in the middle of the night, so I slept from that. The other one was on the way home from the gym, but I didn’t even notice it. The earthquakes now are very small, just like little shakes. I can’t in my wildest imagination see how these could harm me. Maybe if I stand naked under a bowl of acid, that balances on a rope and at the same time I am trying to sneak past a mad, hungry tiger, that is sleeping or something?
Location:５丁目,Shibuya,Japan
I get this question all the time on this trip, so I thought I would make a post about it instead of having to answer the same every time.
First of all, one must understand, that the camera itself does not produce a good photo. You can have the most expensive camera and fancy lens and still take absolute crap photos. What does produce good photos is the photographer, his eye for the composition, scene and his skills in postprocessing. It is like asking a painter of a pretty painting, what kind of brushes and paint he used, with the purpose of trying to paint something similar.
Enough arrogant photo nerd ranting, here is what I use:
– My “big” camera is the cheapest, entrylevel Canon SLR, model 1000D. The lens I use the most is my 8mm fisheye. It is all manual, all metal, produced in Belarus and cost around 200 dollars. Extremely bad quality, takes a lot of practice to get good shots out of. I also bring a 50mm f/1.8 for action shots and a 20-35 mm high quality lens, but I actually haven’t used them much yet and probably shouldn’t have brought them along.
– I also bring a $150 pocket camera, Canon Ixus 130. It takes very sharp photos and I use it quite a lot.
– For creative angles, I use a GorillaPod, which is a tripod with bendable legs.
Besides that, a good amount of specific camera settings, HDR and photoshop work is being done to get the result I had in mind, when I shot the photo.
All in all, the good shots are more a result of many years of practice, than what equipment is being used. Photography is something I really enjoy and have been doing it basically since I was a small kid, so that helps a lot I guess :)
Not many people were going to Tokyo today. The big airbus A330 was basically empty, I counted less than 20 passengers in total. I understand that people are scared to visit, but I am SO glad I decided to go here. I have only been here few hours this evening and is absolutely loving it.
First of all, there is no panic here. Everything is normal, no one is scared and the world is not about to go under. Radiation levels are safe right now, both in the air, water and food. The earthquake, which was the biggest in 500 years or so, only killed five people in a city of 35 million. Nothing is going to happen to me here. In fact, I have been exposed to more radiation during my flight here than I will be during my stay and was in way more danger driving for 18 hours in the mountains of Taipei, than I will be in a Tokyo earthquake.
I went straight from the airport to the training at AACC. We arrived pretty late, but still managed to roll for a good half hour. Really cool gym, great facilities and a nice vibe. Everyone was extremely friendly and I had lots of good rolls. Abe Ani, the owner of the gym, was very, very welcoming. He offered me to sleep in his house during my stay in Tokyo and also take me to DEEP on friday. I was super excited to hear that DEEP is on friday. When I planned my trip six months ago, I was trying to find some dates for the big MMA shows in asia, but it was too difficult. Here I arrive first night and find out I am just in time for one, it is going to be awesome!
Everyone seem very glad that I am here. Abe-san welcomed me in the gym and told me, he was happy to see that I came even though it was a hard time here.
Going to Japan was obviously the only right thing to do. I can’t wait to see what experiences this place will bring me.
Time to sleep!
After much consideration, I have concluded, that I have to go to Japan, no matter the threat of radiation, earthquakes or sea monsters. I will be arriving in Tokyo this evening, excited to see what awaits me there.
Once again, I have visited a place, that I knew absolutely nothing about, and once again, it has been an amazing experience. Before I left, I couldn’t decide wether or not I should visit Taiwan on the way. Even just one day in Taipei seemed like it would take out valuable time from my tight schedule, and therefore wasn’t so attractive a thought. I ended up staying five days and I am bringing home priceless memories and experiences from this place.
In Taiwan, I met some very, very nice and friendly people, had great training, lived in a super cool house in the mountains, surfed on a stunningly beautiful and empty beach, went on roadtrip around a whole country and visited an engineering wonder of the world. I am so glad I didn’t skip this place.
I have come to the conclusion, that I cannot count out any places, no matter how little I know about them on beforehand and no matter how strange or dangerous they might seem from a distance. Adventure and amazing experiences can be found in every corner of the world, it seems. It is out there, just waiting to be discovered. I have to keep pushing myself to go places I normally wouldn’t go, to see what I can find there.
Went to train in Taitung MMA, a small gym located in a garage style place. Very authentic, looked like something out of a Van Damme movie :D I rolled for an hour or so with everyone there, nice training!
I have probably pushed my knee a little too much. I started with two hours of skimboarding in Boracay, next day one hour of sparring in Taipei, next day one hour of sparring in Taitung judo gym and next day two hours of surfing, then one hour of sparring in the garage. I could really feel the pain in my meniscus when I went to sleep, so I skipped surfing yesterday in Taitung.
Me and Daniel drove back to Taipei on what was one of the most beautiful roads I have ever driven. Huge, green mountains and the ocean divided by a small coastal road, zigzagging through the landscape. Unfortunately, we slept a little much, so we only had about an hour of sunlight to enjoy the place, before it got dark. From there, it was about five hours of pitch black rally style driving through little mountain roads to get to Taipei. When we finally arrived, we had driven all the way around the country. Not really on purpose, but cool none the less :)
We went surfing today. We were the only ones in the water, in fact on the entire beach. The scene was amazingly beautiful. So quiet out there. Clear, clean water and giant green mountain walls towering up right in front of us.
I caught many, many waves today, was really going well. Next surf stop will be Hawaii :)
The roadtrip to Taitung was like fail pearls on a fail string. Everything seemed to go wrong. We thought we would drop off a microwave oven in a city on the way. And by on the way, I mean it resulted in a 7 hour detour around the island, since there was suddenly a mountain in the way we couldn’t cross. Only music in the radio was chinese love songs. We got to stay one night in Kaohsiung, a random city in the middle of nowhere. The hotel had spongebob teddybears. We tried to get into a nightclub with slippers, that failed. Then we bought black socks and put them over the slippers to simulate shoes. That failed too. After giving up on discussing with the bouncers in chinese, we eventually found a small bar, probably the weirdest we’ve ever been to. The owner was super excited to have visitors from abroad. He was a huge fan of Bon Jovi and WWE, and his daughter worked in the bar, dressed as a nurse. He told stories and served us japanese whiskey all night. Strangest night out in a long time.
Today, we drove the last part of the road to Taitung. We had been driving through mountain roads, small villages and fishing industrial areas, so we had no idea what to expect. What we found though, was the number one biggest and most impressive gym I have ever been in in my life. It was a HUGE judo gym, seriously, seriously awesome. About 20 people showed up for my class, including some really impressive judo players. We were surprised, to say the least, to find a gym like that in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.
We trained for two hours, then rolled for an hour before lifting weights a little bit. I might go back there and train with the judo team one of the days.
After training we went to an aboriginal restaurant (had no idea there were aboriginals here) and had some very interesting food with the guys from the gym.
Tomorrow it is time for surfing!!
About to leave Taipei for a roadtrip down south to Taitung. It has been some eventful 36 hours here and I have really enjoyed it.
Daniel picked me up by the hotel and we went to the Taipei 101. I have fallen asleep on the couch countless times to documentaries on Discovery about this building, so it was very interesting to finally see it and go up there. Especially the big counterweight steel ball at 87nd-92th floor is an interesting engineering masterpiece. The Taipei 101 is incredibly tall, but to make things even better, they serve beer with ice-cream in it at the top, how cool is that. I also made sure to take a dump up there, something I try to do in all tall buildings of the world. It’s a little side project I’ve got going.
After the 101 we rented bicycles and drove like madmen around the city, before heading to the gym for training.
To my disappointment, Makoto, the coach, was away for Japan. I had been looking forward to train with him, but maybe I’ll catch him on the way back from Taitung instead. I ended up teaching the class and afterwards we rolled for a good hour. Many good guys there, I was having a lot of great rounds. Great feeling to get a full hour of quality sparring done, I haven’t had that for a long time now. I was SO sore in my hip from the skimboarding though, it was crazy.
After training, we went out with a few of the guys from the gym. The eight hour drive to Taitung is gonna be tough with these hangovers :D
Arrived safely in Taiwan, sitting outside on the sidewalk waiting for Daniel to pick me up. He is a Scottish BJJ guy, staying in Taiwan for three months, who saw my blog and contacted me a few days ago. We agreed to meet up and go on a roadtrip to southern Taiwan for BJJ and surfing.
What fills my thoughts most right now, is where to go next. I have no plane tickets from here, and I should make a decision within the next few days.
I could go for a few days to Shanghai or Korea maybe? And then there is Japan. The big, scary, nuclear, earthquake threatened ghost. I am having a really hard time deciding wether I should go there or not. On one hand, it is a place I have wanted to visit for very long, that has a very big attraction to me. Training there is amazing and I want to visit my friend Ryan, who I haven’t seen for years now. On the other hand, there is the current situation of radiation, earthquakes and so on, which is a bit scary. Is it all mass media hysteria? Or is there a real danger of going there? Is it worth the risk, or will it be an amazing, completely safe experience that I would miss out on? Should I play safe, even though I had promised myself to take risks on this trip? I will have to think it through thoroughly before I make any decisions.
What to do?
In Boracay, I encountered yet another heavyweight. Who would have thought that I would roll with so many of those in Asia, a region notoriously known for their fast, technical lightweights.
Again, this burger was heavily relying on it’s weight, but still had some technical foundation. Since I had trained a lot during the day, I was exhausted and I almost ended up tapping out to this athletic blue belt two stripes. I pulled myself together and finished it with experience and good posture.
When sat at home and I bought a ticket for Manila, I had no idea what I would find there. I had talked a bit with Francis from Newbreed, but in my mind, the Philippines was just geographically easy for me to visit on the way up to Japan.
What I found here though, was an overwhelming amount of friendly, helpful and skilled people. So many people wanted to meet up, train, take me out, and invite me to their homes.
Manila was an awesome three day inferno of people, training and traffic. Then staying on Boracay with Jaguar and Ruby Anne, was a really good experience. So much different from how I experienced the same place five years ago as a “regular” tourist. Leaving that amazingly beautiful place, made me feel equally sad this time though.
Next stop is Taiwan. Once again a geographically obvious place to visit on my route. Also a place I know absolutely nothing about, but I think some interesting adventure might be waiting for me there.
Another one of my side projects, the round the world quest to learn surfing, took me to the local skimboard heroes of Boracay today. Carlos spends every day on the beach, playing around with his board, and made a little money for food whenever one of the many tourists would like to try.
Me and Jaguar got up early to try it before I would leave the island. The other evening, I was sitting at a restaurant, observing the locals skimboarding, and was seriously impressed by the moves they pulled off on the small waves.
We had a one hour lesson in the morning before Jaguar went to work. The learning curve was pretty steep for me. Both because there is no real waiting to attempt again when one fails, but also because much of the balancing, body mechanics and postures resemble Jiu jitsu a lot. As Jaguar left, I had lunch, then walked back to Carlos for another hour of practice. It was very interesting to sit down and talk with him about his life and I also got pretty good at riding the board, if I should say it myself ;)
Another thing I take with me from BJJ is, that as a beginners, it is important to trust experience. My body was really trying to convince me to lean backward to keep my balance, but when I listened to what Carlos said and squatted forward, it made the whole difference and I was able to ride for 10-15 meters easily.
I was tempted to buy a board, but carrying it around the world would be a pain in the ass. Will try to find one when I get home, then try it out on the local beach.
…taking 3-4 weeks off training to let it heal is simply not realistic at any time. So a $5 henna on the beach will do instead :D
The guy went a little crazy with the details on the letters, inspired by the Kauai Kimonos logo on my t-shirt.
Took a few more shots outside, now I was at it already.
CHRISTIAN GRAUGART
