colgate's story - 日本とコルゲート氏の物語 the story of colgate🟤 and japan🇯🇵

The main purpose of this forum; tell us what goals you're working on.
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7FigureBrian
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Fri Jul 01, 2022 7:34 pm

I have massive respect for you for sharing all this, especially the "fine print".

If it was hard to read, I can't imagine how hard it was to write. So hats off to you bro.
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colgate
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 1:35 am

colgate wrote:
Mon Sep 26, 2022 1:52 am
スクリーンショット 2022-09-25 19.54.09.png
will explain later (this is a one-way ticket btw)




日本とコルゲート氏の物語 the story of colgate🟤 and japan🇯🇵

I've briefly hinted on KYIL a couple of times that I can speak Japanese but I never highlighted it or made a big deal of it because I felt it wasn't relevant to my self-improvement journey.

Here are those times by the way:
Boldly trying to get my forum-idol @Toast to be a language partner before he had any Japanese ability and before I had any relevance on this forum

Doing my first cold approach in Japanese when I recognized her accent <---there have been several times where I was about to get instantly blown out by an Asian chick when I recognized her accent, switched languages, and turned the approach into at least an exchange

Going on my first date entirely in Japanese

Going on multiple dates with a Japanese girl and pulling

Video of me doing an approach in Japanese (but you can't actually hear the audio lol). @pancakemouse had mentioned that my demeanor and body language had suddenly freed itself with this Japanese approach, to contrast with my English approaches. I didn't write the date report here in my log for some reason, but I actually went on a dinner date with this girl (split bill), and pulled her to my place and we cuddled while she sang YOASOBI songs I was playing. When I tried to invite her over for curry for a D2 however...
スクリーンショット 2022-10-06 20.47.40.png
is it ok if i bring a coworker?
friday is fine. i want you to come by yourself 😉
i only want to be friends with you so let's stop for now
ok


But given that I impulsively bought a flight ticket to Japan and posted about it without further explanation, and getting the appropriate feedback of "but colgate-san ur just running away from ur problems! japan won't solve ur problems! u need to figure out who u are and be that person! GEOMAXXING is not a substitute for deep inner work and taking real action!", I think it's time for me to get this story off my chest.

You have forgotten that I am BROWN🟤 and that I have no WHITE GUY ADVANTAGE (omg wait, I will explain this off-the-bat blackpilling too...eventually...).

I assure you that Japan is not a geomaxx hack in my case, and upon realizing it wasn't, I had made this decision to eject. But I didn't explain it on the forums sufficiently.

So it's story time.

The following posts are going to go into as much detail as I possibly can about how and why I got to this point. It'll be another version of "my story", but from a completely different angle.

The first time I wrote my story, I wrote it from the angle of just purely my experience with girls, and sexuality in general. It was stuff I had to just get off of my chest and out of my system to continue from that point.

This next series of posts starts in 2015 and I'm writing it to basically put out there how uhh...much of a weeb I am...and why doing anything that isn't going to Japan as soon as possible is only hurting my progress.




ライトノベル the visual novel
It was around noon and I had literally slept zero hours and I had just finished playing the best game of all time.
nekopara12.jpg
That’s right, NEKOPARA

Preceding this, I had spent the entire year watching 79 entire anime series.
スクリーンショット 2022-10-05 23.58.19.png

I was a 19 year old in community college working in fast food night shift to fund it, and this was how I spent every waking hour I wasn’t working or in school.

I would come home from work around 7:00am, pop on yet another anime on my computer, and binge watch the entire series until I passed out and I had work or school again.

Nekopara is an erotic visual novel where you are some guy who just started a bakery business, but your little sister shipped off two catgirls along with your bakery and living packages. You "reluctantly" raise them as your "own pets", take them out with you for errands and dates, and then of course, you get to FUCK the catgirls in threesomes.

holy shit!!!!!!!!!!!!! i want to be this guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! how can i be this guy?????????????????????????

wait…

what RETARD literally watches EIGHTY CARTOONS in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE without even understanding the language????????????????

also catgirls speak japanese!!!!!!

The realization that I had literally consumed maybe 600 hours of Japanese content yet had zero comprehension of the language hit me like a pile of bricks. Additionally, I had at least 7-8 years of passive Hindi immersion, but zero to show for that language either. I was completely monolingual in English.

Frustrated in my absolute retardation and perceived failure as a human being, I set my alarm for one and a half hours from then to attend class in total delirium.

When I got home from college, I flipped on Nekopara again but switched the language to Japanese.

i am going to read this ENTIRE THING in japanese!!!!!!!! like it was intended to be read!!!!!!! then i will have my catgirl harem!!!!!
...oh wait right they dont use english characters

After doing some research on how the Japanese writing system works, I realized I was in for a treat. three lettering systems, and one that has over 2000 characters.

But I wanted my catgirl harem, and I didn't care. I pulled up the Wikipedia pages for hiragana and katakana (two of the alphabets they use in Japanese), locked my room door, brought up a notebook, and slammed memorizing all of the characters and sounds that evening.

I had to go to work that night, and I was trying to replicate the hiragana and katakana tables from memory on blank receipt papers in between taking orders at the drive-thru. I came home the next morning and checked my work, realizing I missed a few letters (I didn't have a smartphone at the time to check my work). I filled in and reviewed the letters I messed up, and then I pulled up Japanese Nekopara again (I had it a little past the first line).
スクリーンショット 2022-10-06 0.24.07.png
uhhh ok.......ho n no ??? shi no ??? ??? mo a ru ke do <--- note, this took me probably like 15 minutes at least

oh...i can't escape learning those 2000 kanji huh....

I found out you can draw in kanji characters in google translate so I deciphered the characters that way. The only reason I remember the exact frame I was reading was because it had the word 不安 which became the first kanji word I ever learned.

I never bothered to actually figure out what the whole sentence meant, and was like, damn....this is going to take way too long.....do i even want catgirls???


sidenote: in retrospect, now that I actually understand what ほんの少しの不安もあるけど、means, it's fitting that this is literally the first sentence I tried to break down seriously. It's just basically "i have a little bit of fear but..." which is a recurring theme with any self-improvement and making big decisions


And then I proceeded to do absolutely nothing with the language for another 8-9 months. I even stopped watching anime for the most part, quit my fast food job and switched to a retail job, and largely flipped most of my interests and efforts back into music production (which is basically my lifelong hobby).
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Last edited by colgate on Fri Oct 07, 2022 9:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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colgate
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 1:47 am

授業 the class
Months later, I was signing up for my next semester's classes and realized I needed a foreign language credit to transfer out of community college, and saw that Japanese was offered.

I remembered my anime obsession from a year ago and the desire of actually being able to watch anime and play visual novels in their native language had resurfaced.

I signed up for the introductory class, and started going through some anime shows again.

WTF i HATE watching this.....i'm at the mercy of the damn subtitles!!!!!! and WTF i know they are NOT saying that shit i've heard that mouthnoise with a different subtitle before this makes NO SENSE I HATE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
all of these anime girls are just having fun with their friends and here i am sitting in my room with zero friends jerking off, i could be having this fun myself!!!

These two realizations simultaneously stemmed off into
1. me starting to randomly insert myself into circles of people in my classes like I already belonged there and over time, developing my college friend circle. i think part of my anime dependency in the previous year was that i was trying to use it to fill my need for social interaction, and upon realizing that i should just be doing this in real life, it made me start trying to put myself out there in college

and more importantly for this story...
2. resurging my dormant project to learn japanese so i could have my catgirl harem

And I'm not going to wait for hell to freeze over and have some onee-san teach me in a class. I'm going to get a huuuuuuuuge head start and learn this shit myself.

I reviewed all of the hiragana and katakana again.

But realized I was now in the real shitter.
Kanji.
Over many centuries, thousands of Chinese characters were imported into the Japanese language in lieu of having a prior writing system.
The Japanese government has approved 2138 of them for standard use in newspapers and to be taught to all Japanese students over their 12 years of schooling.

I researched various methods to learn and memorize them, and initially decided, FUCK IT! let's just start by physically creating index cards for every single kanji.
I spent a couple days making a couple hundred cards, decked out with their meanings, possible readings, random words, etc.

They were ✨slick as fuck✨
But they were also ❌completely useless❌!!!😩

Frustrated, I kept searching out for various ways to learn kanji, and eventually stumbled upon a site called Kanji Damage, whose eighth entry aptly points out the kanji for 姦rape is three women. And with that, I knew this was where I had to learn kanji from.

I started learning about 10-20 kanji characters per day using this site with Anki electronic flashcards, while trying to decipher random anime, manga, twitter posts, visual novels, etc, etc. Repeatedly frustrated that I couldn't, I would learn grammar bit by bit from many online sources, and then go back to deciphering Japanese content.

After about a little over a month of doing this, the real Japanese class started. I was excited because I could finally find other people who wanted to learn Japanese, have a teacher, and fill in gaps in my knowledge.

except nobody actually wanted to learn japanese!!!!!!

I was a total ball of plasma in the class, trying to find people who wanted to talk about Japanese learning with me and introducing myself in various mini-circles of people, talking about all the anime I've been watching, new Japanese grammar I learned, etc.

oh i cant read the letters yet haha
haha that looks really difficult
man you really like anime lol

The Japanese teacher also seemed kind of amused but mildly cringed at my eagerness to learn the language because I wanted to understand anime.

now it's war!!!!!💥

I was now even more motivated to prove to everyone that I knew what the FUCK I was doing in the class.

All you fuckers want to do is eat mochi and watch One Piece. mochi SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! no wonder why everyone in america is fat!!!!!!!!!!!!! all of you would be better off for society burned in the furnace for FUEL!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh wow, you're so cool for liking "Japanese culture" instead of anime. I'll see you serving me water at the shinto shrine real soon then!!!

All of you Chinese people are just cheating, you're like "oh we already know the Chinese characters so this will be an easy A! we all just have our own secret ring where we find the answer keys and copy off of each other anyway"

The anime I watch is superior! It's all girls and all of the girls are cute and they have fun with their friends! You guys are all gay! LOL explain how watching shows with male characters isn't gay???? exactly!!!!!!!!! I will learn how these anime girls speak and they will all be mine!

I felt like I was the only person who genuinely wanted to learn the Japanese language and I wasn't ashamed about my reasons, I wanted to watch cute girl anime and have my catgirl harem.
Konachan.com - 203668 sample.jpg

戦争 the war
Realizing it was me vs the 世界 (world), I saw I had my work cut out for me and I was going to have to lone-wolf this.

I went into hyperdrive, constantly watching aforementioned anime/manga and visual novels, listening to Japanese music, reading Japanese twitter posts, anything I could get my hands on.

And I was absolutely livid that I understood next to zero.

I tried as hard as possible to understand things. I would take each sentence I ran into, break down each of the words, try to understand their functions, get frustrated that I'm only picking up a few words, crash study a bunch of sections of grammar books and resources, rinse and repeat.

Every few days I would have epiphanies of understanding new things that I couldn't before, after spending anywhere from 10 minutes to read short sentences, to 12 hours to read simple 10 sentence articles.

At some point, I would write little diary entries in Japanese. It started with dumbass shit like "I woke up. I ate eggs. I went to school. Going to sleep." After a bit over a month of studying I posted this (super cringe and filled with errors) entry onto a now-defunct and account-walled foreign language correction exchange site:
スクリーンショット 2022-10-06 1.51.35.png

I had now repurposed the Japanese class as my personal mini-Japanese study hall where I paid zero attention in lecture, and then went up to the teacher after class to help me correct my crappy Japanese diary musings.

I would do things like this everyday, arrogantly believing and outwardly behaving like I understood Japanese, while simultaneously realizing and being frustrated that I understood zero. The way I would make up for this obvious cognitive dissonance is spamming myself with Japanese content all day and as much as I could and toiling over how I could understand wtf is going on.

Around a month or two after I started studying Japanese, I had to host a kids' workshop at my retail job.

I was outside manning one of the tables, when I overheard some families speaking Japanese.

Turns out a bunch of local Japanese families had brought their kids to this workshop.

MAJI KA YO?????????????????????????????

wait fr???? ok time to speak japanese. because i clearly know japanese right. i mean i've been studying it for literally a month. that's plenty of time to study japanese.

I have no idea what I said to the families since this was about 6 years ago, but I tried as hard as possible to speak entirely in Japanese to them, with my maybe ~40 days of experience.

I was helping the kids build little model whiteboards from pieces of wood and etc. There was lots of asking "what is x in japanese" from my end, but I remember persevering and not switching to English at all, other than asking about certain words. And I'd even avoid asking about certain words, I would just point at objects, saying "this, that" etc or motion with my hands what I wanted to express if possible, and the kids would tell me.

I got affectionately called "colgate-sensei" (teacher colgate, if you aren't a total hyper-weeb) by the little kids.

I went home that day feeling like HOLY SHIT did that just happen??? I obviously wrote a yet another Japanese diary entry about it.

What I had realized is while the range of what I could express was extremely, extremely limited, I could make myself understood in Japanese and understand little kids and their parents speaking Japanese directly to me. Conversation that didn't involve me was of course lost, but the moment they were talking to me I was surprised at how much I could understand, rather than "could not", and took that and sprinted off with it.

This was the point of no return. I want to learn this language and find out the deal with Japan and its people. And now my interests have been redirected slightly away from anime. I didn't realize how much joy I got from literally being able to confidently talk to people, a position I had rarely experienced in my life up until this point.

It wasn't like speaking English either, I felt like I could just be myself instead of trying to pigeonhole whoever tf I am into American culture and nonsense social rules.
With English, one fuckup and I'm out.
But with Japanese, I basically realized I could relish in the "American foreigner pass" and communicate however I wanted to, freely and mostly unrestricted.
Yes, Japanese culture has its own and even arguably antisocial rules, but I'm not subject to them as much as native Japanese people are.
The mere fact I have any competency beyond asking where the toilet was is "amazing" to these people (I would later learn it's more of a sarcastic shock response than a genuine compliment, but I didn't give a FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you think my japanese is 上手?? then you'll get more where that came from dickheads).
I could express the more base and fundamental version of myself in Japanese even with hardly a month of active studying.
And the more Japanese I learn, the more my freedom increases as my granularity and expressiveness increase.

After this experience with the Japanese families at the kids' workshop, my efforts only exponentiated over the coming months. Slamming kanji characters, shoving every minute I had with random Japanese content, using my frustration of inability to comprehend what was happening to actively study grammar and break down sentences, and daily diary entries.

But what kept me going was realizing this was my project and my destiny.
I didn't ask to be thrown into a religious cult as a kid,
I didn't ask to be pigeonholed as a submissive internet gay guy,
I didn't ask to be physically weaker than everyone else.

Japanese finally put me in control of my life. This was completely 100% my project, and my responsibility. Finally, I had no random external factors screwing me over. I had a fucking fresh clean slate and I could prove myself with learning this language, and the social atmosphere in Japanese isn't as cruel because I actually have value once I can speak their language. Since I'll "never be Japanese", it's literally positive feedback just for showing up and taking action.

Between months 2-6 I was doing the following (in no particular order of time/importance):
- nonstop japanese content: anime, manga, youtube, music, podcasts. both at home and in the car
- studying new grammar, both directly from books and grammar sites and indirectly by picking it out from sentences in stuff i was reading and listening to, and from sentence databases when i wanted to try to figure out how to say certain things
- bought dozens of books and manga even if i had no idea what was happening. JUST BUY THE DAMN BOOKS. i bought everything from simple graded readers to manga to freakin textbooks. sometimes i read the whole book, sometimes part of it, and sometimes i barely read one page of the book. and i would revisit books frequently
- bought a shadowing book and listened + mimicked all of the phrases on loop in my car for months until i could do the whole book. i think this book was at least 60% responsible for getting me out of low beginner to intermediate level
- writing daily diary entries, and also made a twitter account and followed japanese people/learners from the internet music community and spammed cringey unnatural japanese tweets
- memorizing 10-20 kanji a day, until around ~900 (month 5ish) when i fuckin bailed because i hated memorizing random symbols like an autist and noticed i don't think kanji is "strange" anymore, even if i've never seen a specific character. and i (correctly realized i) can just figure out new kanji and kanji words on the fly from context and using the dictionary from this point
- talking to myself in the shower, in the car, at work, wherever i could in japanese
- taking 12 hours to read a single 10 sentence article i could read in 30 seconds if it were in english. this time reduced over time of course as i read more things, but this specific instance was monumental because i forced myself to sit down and understand an entire piece of japanese 100%
- forced one of my internet music friends who was already fluent in japanese to speak to me only in japanese from then on, so i can take 10 minutes to read his 1 sentence messages and spend another 5 minutes formulating what i should say. these times dropped drastically over time of course
- generally obnoxiously asking friends if they knew any japanese people i could talk to because i just wanted to speak in japanese with people
- buying a smartphone specifically so i could read japanese content on the go and text in japanese (i previously only had texting slide phones), and also switching its UI language to japanese

Around month 4, I had my first "Japanese dream" where I saw a Japanese person I had started talking to and she was speaking to me in Japanese. I don't remember the contents of the dream now beyond seeing one of the people I was chatting with in Japanese talk to me in the language, but literally having a dream in Japanese was huge for me. I realized my brain was starting to actually process this as language and not just "anime girl noises".

I had many little milestones like the above too. Someone I'd tell about my Japanese adventures gave me this appropriate libel on a discord server I was not yet a part of (I found it when trying to research my past for this specific post):
スクリーンショット 2022-10-06 20.45.53.png

I knew I had "won" my "war" with this Japanese class when one day my teacher told me to stay after class so she could talk to me. I had been perpetually late to class, interrupting her lessons, and blatantly not paying attention.

but she scolded me entirely in Japanese

It's not like she couldn't have scolded me in English, she had been living in America for at least 10 years and was married to an American. But just the fact that she scolded me in Japanese was enough for me to at least start respecting the class and showing up on time, and more importantly, proving that I was actually seen as somewhat competent in the language.
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colgate
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 1:51 am

国民 the citizens
One day, maybe after 5-6 months of studying Japanese, I was browsing facebook and I saw this post about how some girl was being "harassed" or whatever on this language learning social network app...

wait...LANGUAGE LEARNING SOCIAL NETWORK APP????

UHHH?????

I'M LEARNING A LANGUAGE??????????????????????????????????????

I scrolled through the comments and found it was called HelloTalk.

I immediately downloaded it, and figured out what it was all about:
- You can post statuses in the language you're learning, and it's shown to all natives of the language, and they can post grammar corrections on the status
- You can chat literally any native speaker of the language, and the chat feature has built in translation/transliteration tools for when you get stuck
- You can find native speakers in your area and directly message them

This was the best thing I had ever discovered for learning Japanese.

I immediately started posting passing thoughts, pictures of my life, explanations of difficult English points for Japanese people, in Japanese. I got frustrated at each correction I received, and that only fueled me to post more.

And I messaged nearly every person who commented or corrected my statuses.

I also refused to use English. I still arrogantly believed I knew Japanese. Even if the other person was responding to me in English, I would just relentlessly respond back in Japanese.

It filtered a lot of people out. There were plenty of Japanese people with good English and were vigilantly learning the language as I was. However, I never managed to make close connections with any of them and our conversations would quickly die out.

But this (unintentional) strategy also filtered a lot of people in. I was getting a lot of people who would claim "I want to learn English and make foreign friends", but the moment I'm constantly engaging them in pure Japanese (as crappy as my Japanese was), suddenly I'm the main person they're talking to. I started to realize this when they would ask me how to message some of their other English friends, and send me screenshots and I saw the conversations were sparse and not as deep as the ones I was having with them.

I would chat with 5-10 people everyday, entirely in Japanese over the next year. My sleep schedule had coalesced into Japan time as I was messaging Japanese people into the American dusk as night fell upon them, 16-17 hours ahead.

And by now my real life college social circle had started to stabilize so no longer was my life sitting in my hole watching anime all day. I would send pictures of me and my friends doing things to these Japanese people, and they even started to "invest" in my life and my friends.

I had unintentionally created a network of completely one-sided language "exchange" partners where I was getting all the Japanese practice I wanted while they got to get an in-depth look at what life in America is like, in the comfort of their native language.

I would video call these friends regularly too, and get my listening+speaking level up to par as well. Not only was it just for that purpose, but I felt I actually got to know these people more personally through video calls.

And when any of these Japanese people happened to be in my city, I would meet up with them. Our interactions would be entirely in Japanese, and I would tour guide them around the city, and even sometimes introduce them to my friends in person (where we would switch to English of course lol).
スクリーンショット 2022-10-06 20.54.42.png

I think how I used HelloTalk over 2017 was responsible for 70% of my Japanese proficiency. If my pre-HelloTalk level was equivalent to maybe a 4 year old, this shot me up to at least a 9 year old.

If I had to say what's been the best era of my life so far outside of KYIL, it had to be the year of 2017. Thanks to anime and visual novels I had decided that there was more to life than sitting on my computer all day in chatrooms, started having a real social life, and found myself actually valuable to real people by learning Japanese and being able to speak to them, while showing them what life as an American is like.
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💁🏽‍♂️🐶
5'5" indian in 🇺🇸→🇯🇵, childhood in religious cult, turned teenage internet gay, now aspiring toxic male.
📖 My Story

🥰 dating log
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User avatar
colgate
Posts: 919 | Thanks: 1775
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:23 pm
Name: bulldog
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:01 am

夢殺人(ドリームキラー)the dreamkiller (really this should be called 夢自殺(ドリームキラー)though)
I had pretty much stopped actively "studying" Japanese and was purely relying on active and daily functional usage of the language around mid-2017 (about 1 year since I started studying). I wasn't native-level but I was at the point where I had several Japanese friends where the relationship was established entirely in Japanese, and I could do most of my daily activities in Japanese:
- knew basically what all of the Japanese was on my phone and computer (websites were in Japanese too)
- reading manga for fun in Japanese
- looking up my school subjects in Japanese and studying the corresponding articles instead of the given course materials

I would also do things like overhearing the occasional Japanese conversation at school and then cold approaching the group to be friends with them. So I started even making inroads into the local Japanese community in my city, and being exposed to group situations (I still don't have enough experience being in group situations in Japanese, so it's a weak point for me).

I was basically at the point where the only thing I really needed to know was more vocabulary, and I would keep learning new vocabulary as I just kept living my life.

My main focus started shifting towards my actual studies because I had transferred to university at this point, and I was hustling to get an internship. So Japanese became a passive thing. I don't think my Japanese improved much between year 1 and 2 other than increased vocab and comprehension from the passive immersion that I mentioned above.

It's time.

I need to go to this country.

what RETARD!!!!!!!!!!!! learns an entire language only to NOT GO TO THE COUNTRY???????????????????????

I bought plane tickets to stay in Japan for two weeks the next winter (7 months in advance!!), and spammed every single "close" friend I had. By now I wasn't really using HelloTalk so the amount of people I was talking to had basically stabilized to a set of 7-15 close-ish friends, and I think I really only actively kept in touch with about 3-5 of them.

The Japanese loooooove planning things super far in advance, and I had set up a precarious plan to meet all of these people. I generally tried to group people who lived near each other around the same time, and I ended up visiting all of Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Tokyo over 2 weeks. Some of the experiences I had were:
- the first person I planned on meeting up with me being an 18 year old girl and therefore ghosting me so I went to the aquarium by myself instead
- experiencing real family Japanese family life for 2 days with a housewife friend who took me to her house in the sticks an hour away from the main city (this was probably my favorite experience, not only was this the realest Japanese experience I had, I genuinely felt like I got a taste of real and normal family life, given my rocky childhood)
- going to various temples and onsen (hot springs)!!!
- enjoying the amazing convenience store food and hot lemon drinks daily
- having some random Japanese woman in an elevator freak out at me being able to read a sign saying "parking lot" and my Japanese friend getting more pissed off than I did about it
- hiking some mountains outside of Kyoto
- eating dried fish snacks and drinking Asahi beer while watching Japanese variety TV shows with a friend until 2 am
- singing karaoke with a cute girl who wanted to hear me sing in English and then proceeding to butcher the entire thing because I can't perceive lyrics
- going to the Tokyo Auto Show and seeing lots HOT BIMBOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (that i repressed all of my interest in) ...and also some cars or something
2022-10-06 20.56.18.jpg
photo_2022-10-06 20.57.06.jpeg
photo_2022-10-06 20.57.13.jpeg

I didn't really care about doing "tourist" things or anything crazy, I just wanted to finally meet these people I had been talking to over a screen in person.

And the best part was I used 100% Japanese the entire time. I don't remember a single time where we even briefly had a conversation in English. There were a couple times when I was at restaurants or random places that I had a bit of trouble and a couple of zealous English learners trying to pull fast Japanese on me when they realized I didn't want to speak English, but beyond maybe asking what certain words were, I still managed to operate in Japanese.

On my last day in Japan, my flight was leaving very early in the morning so I decided to stay overnight in a net cafe booth. I was trying to learn all of the different Japanese prefectures and geography on the computer (I still have no idea about these btw) and couldn't sleep.

I enjoyed my experiences in Japan, but I felt pretty down for the next few hours. For one, I felt like I couldn't fully sit in and enjoy the trip because I had literally brought only a small backpack and 2 sets of clothes, and was constantly moving around, meeting new people like a bullet. And I felt empty because I started feeling like I couldn't live here because I don't want to get a job here and deal with the brutal Japanese work culture, and raising a foreigner child here might prove to be a huge hurdle if I did plan to move here.

I was literally too scared of ruining my overly positive impression of Japan and Japanese I was able to craft by my own journey of learning their language. And I honestly seemed to care more about the fact I could speak another language and could escape the Western world, which I always felt shackled by my entire life. So I was content with that I suppose.

and well uhh...there's a lot of cute girls...and i didn't get any of them...i mean i had cute japanese female friends...but it's not like they liked me back...and some of them had boyfriends or were married anyway so i can't do anything about that...uhhh

I had made a decision that I can't live in this country and I could only enjoy it through the lens of a tourist who would come here every now and then to hang out with his Japanese friends. Learning the language was worth it insofar as it had given me a happiness I wouldn't have been able to achieve otherwise and pushed me way out of my comfort zone socially by making me actually want to socialize with new people, and for that I can continue to use the language. But living in Japan? well...sayonara Japan...

I flew back home, and was immediately depressed. no onsen??? stale and shitty convenience store food??? have to drive everywhere???

and uhh...i mean there are cute girls here sure...but nothing like those japanese girls...but i didn't want to admit that to myself at the time...

Luckily this depression didn't last long because my interests switched to powerlifting and picking up a barbell for the first time in my life thanks to a university friend who wanted me to be his lifting buddy.

Back home, I decided I'm going to try to integrate into the local Japanese community as much as possible. Fortunately I lived in a place where there was a sizeable Japanese population, so I guess I can have the best of both worlds, right? General comfort of familiarity with America (mostly due to my career), and I get to associate with the group of people I seem to enjoy talking to the most.

Over 2019, I had been doing these things:
- using the Meetup app to find local Japanese language exchanges and Japanese events, and making more local friends
- learning how to make some Japanese food (by reading the recipes from Japanese sites of course) so I had an excuse to go to the Japanese grocery stores without just buying random snacks, and talking to cashiers in Japanese
- reading the local Japanese newspaper to mine for events I could go to. the only event i ended up finding out about was this big Japanese "field day" event where 100-200 Japanese people (and like 2 or 3 hyper-weebs like me) met up to participate in various games like tug-of-war, obstacle courses, relay races, etc. now that I had started lifting too, I had some faith in my physical abilities and surprisingly wasn't a total train wreck at this (ie: i wasn't dead last completely useless, but i certainly wasn't top 10% either)

I saw that my university was offering a Business Japanese course. Seeing that it was my last semester and my courseload was light, I thought I should take it and learn more about Japanese work culture and formal Japanese because I had only learned casual Japanese really. It required majoring in Japanese and taking a bunch of prerequisite courses, but I was able to get in the class by emailing the Japanese department in Japanese and having them evaluate my ability.

At least in this class there were a few people who actually had comparable Japanese to mine and actually enjoyed studying Japanese so that was cool. I didn't feel like I was in some weird battle with the smug American mochi gobblers. And I enjoyed doing roleplays in class where I actually had to learn some things I didn't know.

At the end of the semester, we had to write a presentation on something related to Japanese Business. I decided to research my career field in Japan and prepare my presentation on that.

But I had discovered they make 30-50% as much as we do here in America (in retrospect, it's not a huge deal because the cost of living in Japan is lower). And the main thing that made me finally put the nail in coffin of ever moving to Japan was realizing that especially in this field, they will hold you in the office as late as midnight. I also knew many of my Japanese friends had pretty much no time to hang out because they'd be out working from 8:00am to 11:00pm. I didn't realize how open the world of business and making money was at the time, and thought my only destiny with making money was within my career field so I was like "やっぱり i should just stay in america and grow my life here, and go to japan every now and then to hang out with my friends or whatever i guess. they only value me because i show them what life in america is anyway"
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Last edited by colgate on Fri Oct 07, 2022 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
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colgate
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:02 am

大流行 the pandemic
I graduated university at the end of 2019, and subsequently got rejected by some girl (from university) I had asked out on a date (I thought, okay, now I will focus on finding a girlfriend and building a new social circle since I have graduated university. I had (regrettably) suppressed both of these throughout university to "focus on my studies").

With that, I decided to continue with my idea of integrating into the local Japanese community.

I had a Japanese friend who was looking to move to a new place near my office. We went to tour a bunch of apartment rooms, and settled on one.

We realized we couldn't afford the apartment just by ourselves, so he was going to go inquire into the local Japanese community to see if we could get a third person to join us.

I was thinking, okay great. Things are starting to go into motion. I'm going to be constantly exposed to Japanese from now on, learn more about the Japanese people here in my city, build up my social skills, and inevitably find a girlfriend and move on with my life from there. I'm on my way to having what we would now call "moving to the suburbs and becoming parents to two cute golden retrievers". And I thought my kids would probably turn out alright here, because the city I lived in is pretty multicultural and I can raise them in a much better way than I was raised, and they'll be some degree of bilingual. Time for me to settle down.

Yeah, I wanted to be some eclectic music producer in Japan and have a bunch of idol girls singing for me, but frankly that isn't possible and it's childish anyway. I don't even know how to do that in the first place. It's time to grow up and be reasonable.

...
...

The state is ordering all residents to stay at home. Do not go to work. Do not go outside. All travel has been banned.
There is a deadly virus with the severity of the Spanish Flu that is overloading the hospitals and thousands are dying per day.
Stay inside, stay 6 feet away, wear a mask.


My entire plans to move out are derailed and I'm stuck at my parents' house for the better part of 2020. And of course, I can't meet local Japanese people anymore and advance my social skills, let alone visit Japan now.

I stopped doing any form of Japanese for the next year or so. It just wasn't something to focus on anymore. It's best to just put it away now. It was a good run and a good arc of my life.

And given the insane response to the coronavirus pandemic in my state (let alone Japan's), I realized perhaps I should just try to advance my life in a less insane place.

I move to Chattanooga, Tennessee in fall 2020, a very lax small city in the deep south. People were friendly and not stuck in their safety bubbles, the warm Southern hospitality was refreshing compared to the coldness of the Californians, who wanted to stay in their little stuffed igloos of safety.

I was initially more excited to live here, and started talking to my Japanese friends over video calls again occasionally to share with them what life in this town is like as opposed to my previous life. I also had a huge mansion house, so I shared that with them as well.

We would joke about having them come here, but of course that wasn't going to happen given the times and the indefinite nature of the pandemic restrictions. And of course, I stopped studying any Japanese at all, and largely hit up my Japanese friends because I wanted social interaction.
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 2:02 am

発見 Finding KYIL
One day, I was looking up "tinder guide" on internet search. I stumbled upon Andy's infamous Tinder guide and was astonished at the level of detail.

But that's not what got me hooked on the site. I had discovered he had been jesus christ, going up to girls he didn't know and talking to them on the sole basis that he wanted to fuck them : x. Wait, what? You can just do that??? And it works???

My worldview blew open and I spent the better part of June and July 2021 listening to all of Andy's 365 podcasts where he often talked about his cold approach adventures.

On one of the podcasts, he had a panel of @Toast, @Manganiello, and some other guy talking about their own cold approach experiences.

"this guy fucked a hot korean chick by just going up to her and talking to her? wtf?"
"and this guy wants to move to japan??????????????? he doesn't even know japanese????????????????????"

I had to investigate more, and checked out the KYIL forums as a guest. I read through the entire approach race @Toast and @Manganiello were having.

But more importantly, I was very curious to see how and if @Toast was actually going to head off to Japan.

My own desire to go to Japan was 6 feet under in a coffin by now. But I showed up to the graveyard again with my shovel and waited.

I made an account, and posted this message on his log
colgate wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:46 pm
Hey man, if you're looking for a study buddy/someone to speak Japanese with, I studied it seriously for a while and made a lot of Japanese friends abroad, even meeting up with them in Japan and speaking Japanese 100% of the time some years ago. I'm probably N2/N3 level (haven't actually taken the test).

A bit more rusty now and haven't been studying it much lately, but hit me up if you wanna exchange contact info.

こんにちは、俺も日本語しゃべるよ。もちろんネーティブじゃないから、不自然なところがあるんだけど、結構話せると思う。

トーストさんのやる気がすごいと思います。もしかしたら誰かと一緒に日本語を勉強する欲望があったら、どうぞ僕に連絡してください
To which he replied
Toast wrote:
Tue Aug 10, 2021 5:26 am
@colgate You are definitely way above my level. Im probably not even N5 yet. Without google translate I was able to read and understand maybe 1/3rd. Appreciate the offer to study together though.
lol is this guy really going to learn japanese and go to japan????? i mean he's pretty good at this cold approach thing...but is he really going to do this for real????????
Toast wrote:
Fri Mar 25, 2022 9:58 pm
Japan Update:
Apartment is officially secured. Spoke with the rental agency on Friday and we went over paperwork.
Just submitted my visa paperwork to the Japanese consulate and I can pick up my visa on April 1st
Rented an Airbnb for $550 from April 5th - April 28th
Contacted a house sitting agency so i can cut cost of rent for the time b4 my apartment is available to move in

USA shit:
Apartment is like 1/3rd packed up
Started a spread sheet to track my expenses so I can budget properly while I'm out in Nippon-desu
New tenant is gunna buy my TV and Ikea shelves for $150 so that's some nice extra cash
Posted my One wheel on Craigslist finally. Hopefully I can sell it for $1300 b4 I leave. If not my friend will sell it for me

Still need to contact the internet, Gas, and electric company to terminate my contract.

Going away party this Saturday. Bonfire on the beach and gettin drunk af with the homies
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
何 THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...

to be continued...in the bulldog pen........................

つづく・・・
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Toast
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 6:50 am

colgate wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 1:35 am
Boldly trying to get my forum-idol @Toast to be a language partner before he had any Japanese ability and before I had any relevance on this forum
Lol forum-idol got a good laugh out of me.

Happy to have had a positive influence on ur journey man.

And what a fuckin ride you had to get to who you are now. Completely 100% changed man from where u started. Crazy how much someone can change just from wanting to bang chicks, speak Japanese, and move to Japan

Honestly excited to see what you will accomplish once u get here.

君はたくさん大切な知識を教えた。俺は本当嬉しいに友達になる 。来日する時期がだんだん近づいてきましたね。
Japanese Lay count -10

Toast's AA Log
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=517&p=9840#p9840
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NightRoller
Posts: 271 | Thanks: 79
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:06 pm
Name: Graham
Goal: Get Career Job, Move
Age: 23
Motto: Win and help win
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 8:09 am

スゲーー
This is pretty darn inspiring. As a guy who never looked at traditional porn, opting for anime tiddies (before overcoming that addiction---but I'm definitely a "fellow weeb"), and who just came back from Japan from a 6-week internship (enough to taste and know I want to go back... though I prefer girls with some significant おっぱい, the girls in Japan are super cute and I love being able to walk anywhere I need/want to go), I have a vested interest in finding how the heck you @colgate and @Toast get the money and freedom and find the logistics to move to Japan. It's incredible and hard to imagine for me now, a college senior who sometimes still lives with his parents in the middle of nowhere. But given you can do it, there's gotta be a way for me too.
マジで、上手な分けでないけど、アニメとか女とかについて話したかったら、私もゆっっっくりメッセージを読んだり返事を送ったりしたい。
By the way, if you're still open to or looking for new Japanese-learning resources, I recommend Nativshark (pretty much 60-70% of my learning is from them at this point, even after 3 years of college Japanese classes. It's probably the kind of resource you'd have wished to know of back then (if only it had existed!), Colgate.
Goals: See this post
Skill-based 365 project
Laycount: 28 --- In 2023: 12 (as of May 03'23)
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colgate
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Fri Oct 07, 2022 8:23 pm

NightRoller wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 8:09 am
マジで、上手な分けでないけど、アニメとか女とかについて話したかったら、私もゆっっっくりメッセージを読んだり返事を送ったりしたい。
どうぞ俺にpmで連絡してくれ
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Fri May 05, 2023 3:09 am

colgate wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 8:10 pm
japan rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i am never living in america!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i will die in japan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

aka the return of colgate ranting in english to his phone walking around tokyo streets at 2am (guys, it's journaling!!!)



most of these parts are entirely optional to watch and i even thought of taking them out, but i did end up summarizing myself in the video so i left it in, and i'll timestamp the video instead so you can watch as much as you want lol

0:00-0:20 - this is not a WEEB ANIME moment guys, japan is really my home!!!!!!!!!

part 1: 25 years outcast in america, childhood, adolescence, early adulthood

0:20-6:27 - being so much of a childhood outcast that i didn't even fit in with the dungeons of dragons nerds, getting into the online community of people making pretend video game music

6:28-11:48 - oops half of my entire social circle shoots up estrogen LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! also it's technically 99% male (also if i haven't made it clear already, my entire social circle i care about is on the internet)

11:49-13:38 - kill your inner loser, trying to get chicks and solve girl issues seriously for the first time ever.
btw footnote at 12:30, when i talk about being out of place at social events because i have no idea what normal people are interested in, that definitely applies to dates

part 2: japan allows me to make up for lost life experiences i was supposed to have without me even having that goal
13:39-15:27 - living with a japanese family and seeing a functional family like how i imagined when i was a kid for the first time in my life

15:28-18:57 - "japanese mom". japanese family (and some others) effectively fill in missing "mental" relationship roles

19:14-22:50 - various woes with trying to balance house setup and diving into approaching, aka colgate makes excuses for

22:51-25:30 - parallel universe music community in japan that's linked but not shared with the western one i'm a part of.

25:31-28:48 - surprisingly i am able to connect and PENETRATE!!!!!!!!!! the japanese parallel community because i'm well known enough in the western community that several japanese people know me as well, and i can also speak japanese fluently. i hit up a couple japanese ppl to tell them i'm moving to japan and i get invited to 10 billion events and even playing live, which i never did in my life in america. now im the fuckin cool guy

28:49-31:04 - the parallel japanese music community is actually normal??? and also it's not a sausagefest????????????????????? there are (plenty of) GIRLS????????????????????????????????????????????

31:05-32:45 - i actually fit in with the japanese music community, unlike i've ever fit in with any social circle in my entire life, irrespective of cultural and language barriers, and time as well. i'm now in a circle of people (mixed gender) going out and doing stuff together, and they are pushing me to actually make a fucking album for once and do live shows

32:46-37:00 - feet in two boats: i know i need to handle the girl thing, approach, and get laid. but i'm enjoying unexpectedly becoming a "normie" and having normal friends with a normal hobby and being supported/pushed to advance in that hobby by said friends. but not having the girl thing handled means even if i am supposedly a "normie" now, i can't capitalize on said girls in my surroundings,

part 3: summary
37:00-39:42 - short summary of the previous 37 minutes of the video assuming you started watching this video from here lol

39:43-48:06 - OMG what should i do guys........................i have a normal social life and friends and i'm high value.........but i don't know how to capitalize on my value still..........but i'm riding the emotional high of finally being in this kind of position for the first time in my life.............so i'm not pissed off enough to start hustling with girls..................

48:07-end - conclusion
reposting here for posterity
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