I’d be willing to put on the first-ever Test Fest Japan for FREE! All you’d have to is throw in 50 USD for my plane ticket and I’ll put on a full day seminar. I could even bring over samples of Biotest products! That’s a 47 million dollar value, for (almost) FREE!
I envy you all.
I cannot believe I missed this thread. If it hadn’t been for a timely tip from my lovely kunoichi accomplice, I never would have known! Thanks Sabrina!
I came to Japan for the first time eighteen years ago this August. All told, I have spent roughly fifteen years here, mostly in Chiba, momentarily in Ibaraki, and currently in Shizuoka. I have lived in manshon apartments, elegant suburban houses, a 150-year-old kominka, and once spent a miserable winter in a shithole 6 jo room with a toilet but no bath, no hot water, and a kitchen that doubled as the genkan. Fuuuuuuck that shit.
I was lucky enough to train with Steve Bellamy, who some of you may know if you happen to be in the Kanto area and are involved in judo, karate, triathlon, weightlifting, computers, aerobics or womanizing. Steve had a black belt in each of these.
Under his tutelage we trained in most of the gyms in Chiba, from squeaky-clean “fitness clubs” to hardcore powerlifting places to public gymnasiums with nothing more than a mat and a few barbells. Didn’t matter. I sweat, puked and shed tears of blood at all of these places. At one point I was about 185 pounds at 5’7, at a bodyfat of about 12 or 13. He had me snatching bodyweight, benching and squatting BW and a half, and deadlifting double BW. Not on the same day. Thank god.
We went our separate ways after that, and a lot of shit happened that I won’t go in to here.
Suffice to say that I am now in Shimoda, on the southern tip of Izu peninsula. I have the ocean on my left, the mountains on my right, lots of trees and way too many bugs. It’s not such a bad place, all told. The picture up top is my current kicks, and my Land Cruiser, to which I am soon to bid a tearful farewell.
This is my “gym”. As you can see, it is a beach. I call it my private beach because hardly anyone ever comes around except fishermen and old obasans collecting seaweed. Of particular note are the large granite boulders strewn along the ground. These come in sizes ranging from fist-size to Volkswagen Beetle size, and many of my workouts consist of picking up these rocks, lifting them, throwing them, carrying them above my head for hundreds of yards over uneven ground, and loading them into my rucksack and carrying them back to my house.
I also have a set of kettlebells, which I ordered from Ironman Japan for roughly twice what they would have cost in the States, and several times a week I can be seen doing swings, cleans, snatches, and side presses with the old pood-and-a-halves (that’s “24 kg” to you, Comrade), much to the consternation of the fishermen.
There is one gym in Shimoda, basically a semi-private home gym up in the hills that charges 8000 yen per month. It’s bullshit, but my only other option is just building a home gym at my place. Which I’ll probably end up doing.
Here I am, humping a sack of rocks up from the beach. My bathroom scale choked when I tried to weigh myself with the backpack, but my nearest estimate of the weight of the rocks is 115 pounds.
I carried them up a 75 foot stone stairway from the beach, then up the winding road to my house, about a half mile. On a good day I can move five of these loads before it gets dark, but if I’m feeling lazy I’ll just use the fucking truck.
Sabrina hates this picture because I look like I have no fashion sense. I have to admit, I do look like one of those guys TC was talking about in his Badass Mofos article, you know, the ones who say things like “you best not be lookin’ at me, peckerwood!”
However, it does show that I do a bit of supplementary GPP training. I call this the Ft. Leavenworth TBRILR program: Turning Big Rocks Into Little Rocks. It’s simple. Just find a 400-pound boulder and reduce it to rubble with a 15-pound sledge.
Excellent for the deltoids, the forearms, and for scaring away those pesky neighbors.
Representin’ the 'Nation in Shizuoka Prefecture!!
I rarely let minor things like torrential thunderstorms get in the way of my training. On this particular afternoon, lightning struck within a hundred feet of where I was walking. If that don’t motivate you, nothing will.
And here is my Christmas present to myself. A shitload of Biotest stuff.
Yes, postage is a killer. On a 40,000 yen order, figure about another 7500 yen for Fedex international priority, and between 2500 and 4500 yen for fucking customs duty.
I’m not complaining, though. It’s lucky Biotest ships here at all. Poor Canadian fuckers. 
[quote]David Barr wrote:
I’d be willing to put on the first-ever Test Fest Japan for FREE! All you’d have to is throw in 50 USD for my plane ticket and I’ll put on a full day seminar. I could even bring over samples of Biotest products! That’s a 47 million dollar value, for (almost) FREE!
I envy you all.[/quote]
Okay, Dave. I’ll kick in fifty bucks. Anybody else? I’m not saying that my place would be the ideal venue for such a to-do, however I should point out that just a few miles up the road is Shirahama beach, which turns into the Surf Bunny Mecca of Eastern Japan during the summer months.
Just in case, you know, you happen to be interested in, uh, getting your stick waxed.
Cheers!
V
P.S. Bring over a couple tubs of Strawberry Metabolic Drive and a few boxes of Peanut Butter Metabolic Drive bars (Yeah, I know the name changed. So what), maybe a bottle of Alpha Male or two, and I’ll pay ya back when you get here!
Great thread people. I’m no where near Japan, but I have a question for you all.
Question- How the hell did you all end up in Japan? Through the military, job, or is it school related?
I came over here in 1999 to teach English with an eikaiwa (conversation school) called Nova straight out of University and been here ever since.
There are plenty of teaching gigs out here and a fair few different companies to come over with.
BUMP
Just wanted to bump the thread so I could get more answers
I seemed to have missed this thread also—I live in Chiba about 30 minutes from Ueno. I found a chain gym that also has those strange dumbells wrapped in rubber. I have a tattoo though so it makes it a pain in the rear, I always have to find the lockers hiding in the corner so no Ogisan sees my tat and gets me kicked out (already happened 1x). As far as supplements I use the Weider protein also, but chicken at 33 yen a gram is easy to come by as well as lots of spinach and broccoli this time of year. I agree eating cleaner over here is a lot easier, but there isnt as much selection. I have yet to find a decent place to buy turkey, let alone turkey sausage, turkey bacon, etc… The fish is delicious though. I came over here to teach for Nova as well, and have been here 18 months.
Yeah, tell me about the tattoo bullshit. I’ve only been asked to leave two gyms and an onsen in fifteen years, which is a pretty good average, but it still pisses me off. And bellowing about the stupidity of the rules and threatening to beat the manager into a bloody pulp is not the best way to advance your argument that you are not, in fact, affiliated with the yakuza.
I’ve made a game out of it. I go to hot springs and gyms with highly visible “no tattoos” signs in the lobby, then after I have used the place and am getting ready to leave, I photograph myself in front of the sign, grinning and showing off the tattoo on my arm.
I’ve trained at Levene, NAS, Central Fitness, Verdi, and a few others around the Ichikawa and Funabashi area in Chiba. Haven’t run across any plastic-covered dumbbells, though.
Are you talking about bumper plate dumbells? The ones in my gym are made up of plates covered in the same rubber stuff used for bumper plates.
