THE BROWN SHOGUN - japanese language progress + social life update

[natedawg]

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

I DON'T CARE IF ANYONE THINKS THIS LIST OF THINGS IS RETARDED SIMPLE

I WILL
() do dynamic stretches
() meditate 10 minutes
() eat breakfast

IF I CAN'T EVEN DO THIS, THEN THE NEXT DAY WILL BE EVEN SIMPLER
IF I CAN DO THIS, THEN I WILL MAKE THE NEXT DAY INCREMENTALLY MORE CHALLENGING

I WILL STARVE THE NEURAL PATHWAYS OF CONSTANT DIGITAL SELF-MEDICATION
I WILL CHOKE SLAM TECHNOLOGY INTO THE BED INSTEAD OF LETTING IT FUCK ME IN THE ASS
MY NEW NEURAL PATHWAY WILL BE literally doing what i set out to be doing in the first place omfg

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

No judgment here. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Lao Tzu

[colgate]

TODAY I WAS A SUCCESS

do dynamic stretches
meditate 10 minutes
eat breakfast

in addition to the above tasks, i had arranged a call with my online japanese teacher to practice phone call scenarios. as i ranted about in the above videos, i HATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! when i can't understand what people are saying in japanese, and it tends to happen way more often to me than i would like in situations like phone procedures and making reservations

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i think this is a really good idea and im gonna do it more often with different teachers to get more scenarios and voices. i want to have more confidence on the phone and in my day to day life in japan so having these simulated situations will really help. you really only get treated like the retard foreigner if you act like the retard foreigner, having been on both sides of the coin

this is really going to be the BROWN SHOGUN run. like those sushi chefs who have to train for 10 years to finally inherit their family's 20-generational sushi restaurant dating back to the 1400s

i slept for 4.5 hours afterwards. now it's 5:50pm.

i have had a habit of refusing to admit when i'm sick and barreling on with life. but somehow, coincidentally in all of this, as soon as i returned to tokyo i got a cold/cough.

i think usually when i get sick, i know it will go away by the end of the week, and i have enough going on where i really don't want to take days off. but since i'm in this bizarre deep state rn, i just decided sleeping more would be more beneficial. but i didn't sleep more in lieu of doing the stuff i wrote down on the todo list.

[colgate]

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

() wake up at 6:30 (new activity)
() eat breakfast
() dynamic stretching
() meditate 10 mins

[lacroix]

...

Wow, I got a pretty bad cold a few days ago too. I guess this is just the season for that. Just keep pushing, and try not to do zero on any day.

[colgate]

TODAY I WAS A SUCCESS

wake up at 6:30
eat breakfast
dynamic stretching
meditate 10 mins

and then again i ended up sleeping for like 4 hours afterwards.



i did end up going to bed at like 11:30pm-ish and falling asleep somewhat quickly with a trick i tried a few times:

1. set a 3 minute meditation timer
2. meditate (as in focus on breathing in, out, in, out) except in a comfortable sleeping position rather than sitting up
3. when the timer runs out do one of the following:

• 3a. if you still feel kind of energetic set the timer again and start over
  3b. if you feel annoyed that the timer went off then stop and fall asleep

running this process 2-4x seems to get me to that point where you're not exactly fast asleep but you'd rather be in bed sleeping, which pretty quickly makes me actually fall asleep.

it's somewhat similar to that feeling you have when your alarm clock rings and you want it to stfu and keep sleeping. basically this process induces that state (since the meditation timer effectively becomes an "alarm clock" RUDELY! trying to wake you up). except now you actually get to sleep!



but i did nonetheless get less than 7 hours of sleep. i think combined with that and being kinda sick these past few days just made me want to sleep more.

before i went to bed last night, i decided to make my macbook automatically shut off at 9:30pm. so let's see if that works for breaking the "oh just let me do this last thing on the computer" cycle

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also i finally finished writing my notes up for this video:


as i said earlier im trying to improve my japanese listening comprehension and other than watching cute girls talk about the weather, i am trying to check out kyil/gll-adjacent dating/self-improvement content but for japan, targeted at japanese guys (as i get almost zero foreigner advantage, especially in tokyo).

part of the hurdle is improving my cultural understanding and comprehension lol!!!!!

the video is basically an overview of things you can do to improve your conversation skills with girls

here are my full notes (in japanese lol, u can just translate the page): https://bulldog-pen.notion.site/1ebc1e8 ... 09fb143c29

i am going to have to review these because they're pretty much a bunch of actionable steps and personal reflections you have to do including:
- straight up memorizing a few simple openers, ways to pull/isolate, and one-shot jokes to sprinkle here and there
- understand what girls actually want to talk about and how they "communicate with feelings" by listening to "girls talk" shows (great, more japanese listening comprehension for me!)
- call girls on the phone from dating apps
- huge! self-reflect on how you can show empathy for girls and make them feel like you really understand them
- prepare questions to ask girls, and how you would answer questions girls often ask you. maintain a list of both and add onto them as you call girls/go on dates with girls

the video also made the point that "things you remember with your heart" are the most important (as opposed to just your head), in addition to then actually going out there and taking action

taking action was never really my issue, but i had no idea wtf "things you remember with your heart" or anything otherwise related to feelings were. but this video explained it to me in a way i understood it for the first time:

things that you remembered with your head, you can just recite out whenever you want, and it's kind of just information.

things you remembered with your heart, usually they're just locked away inside of you somewhere. but when you actually feel the same thing as someone else, you suddenly become the person you were in the past when you felt that same emotion, and it suddenly unlocks, and you can empathize with the other person in detail

lol now i know why i struggle with empathy, especially with girls, so much. i've felt like my life experience in the first place is so alien and bizarre from most people's, and when it comes to girls they're operating under completely different rules and have completely different experiences that i could never have. it's rare that i really can even connect with a person, though when i do it's pretty deep and it's usually because the other person also had some wild backstory of starting from the total shitter and being cast out of society early on in life.

i did kind of already understand the above about myself, but this video goes on to say how you can straight up learn how to empathize with girls (because that's what they want): by listening/watching "girls talk" shows, paying close attention to the topics, how they ask each other questions, and how they respond to each other to keep the vibe up. because it's completely different than the type of gran autismo style info exchange conversations i'm used to and comfortable with. it's "feelings sharing" interactions.

the guy recommends this show which also has a more modern 2019-2021ish version

also, he goes onto say that you need to journal about various moments in your life that you were highly emotionally moved in general, especially related to dating (though mine would be unrelatable to girls). i assume journaling about it would make them slightly more in the forefront of my subconscious/conscious. additionally, it would allow you to give responses other than "oh damn that sucks" or just "i know how you feel" (which would basically cut off the topic abruptly), instead being able to express that you actually understand the girl's feelings and give her more to go off of



anyway i had a initial small goal of "intensively listening to 100 minutes of japanese content". while i basically passively watch hours of japanese youtube all day, it's usually things that are way too easy for me, or if it's too hard i dont bother actually trying to understand the difficult parts.

so with this video, i'm at 10:36/100:00

[colgate]

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

() wake up at 6:30 am
() eat breakfast
() dynamic stretching
() meditate 10 mins
() head to the gym immediately after (new activity)

i am 100% sure the gym will be closed tomorrow but im going to build a habit of leaving the house in the morning (other than to run down to buy breakfast). i was pretty consistent with going to the gym up until the week i had my trip, and i'm pretty sure my shoulder is recovered so i want to start again.

and on non-gym days, my gym is inside the train station so i can just go somewhere else in tokyo and explore or something. idk. apparently adventures are good for mental health

[natedawg]

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

Speak that shit into existence, brother. Let's go.

[colgate]

TODAY I WAS A SUCCESS

wake up at 6:30
eat breakfast
dynamic stretching
meditate 10 mins
head to the gym immediately after (new activity)

みんな、あけおめ！！！
今年もよろしくお願いします‍
happy new year from japan!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i said it to the convenience store worker this morning and he gave me a fistbump and engaged me in brief small talk. even if you have no one to say it to at home, make sure to say it to someone irl!!!



i had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night actually. after a few rounds of the short meditations i started coughing, which broke my pre-sleep lull.

i remember going down retarded thought patterns that usually would have sprung me out of bed and had my crazy ass walking around otherwise silent japanese neighborhoods rambling in english to my phone past midnight.

i just decided to do a 10 minute meditation (not the one i did this morning), which was VERY HARD. i had to physically move my arms up and down to the breaths to focus on the breathing and away from the thoughts. it was the mental/focus equivalent of struggling on a rep at the gym.

what's hilarious is that i had another thought pop up a bit later during that meditation realizing that i completely forgot what the thought pattern that had me in agony just minutes prior.

wait, i can literally just force the thoughts to go away????????????????????????????????????? this is possible????????????????????????????????????????????

yeah, the general idea with meditating is that you are focused on some menial task (like breathing in and out), and eventually you will lose focus.

but the moment you realize you lost focus, you shift the focus back on the menial task.

i tried something similar while i was walking outside this morning, focusing on my left right left right left right footsteps. this was a bit harder but after around 3-4 weeks, i'm starting to slowly see the benefits of meditation and how it can not only improve focus, but reduce anxiety. i will definitely be talking about it more in future logs



the gym opens at 9 on holidays but i have the cheap pass which would have me paying extra fees to use it on sundays/holidays anyway. and walking over to the gym today was more of a routine-building exercise.

that being said, i kind of would rather be outside in the late morning/early afternoon when it's slightly warmer and there are more people who are NOT rushing to work (although there was no one today since it's new years day lol)

i will post an update tonight for my new activity but i think i want to make it something like 15-30 minutes of focused "watching weather news live in japanese".

focused because i usually just watch funny clips from this, which is fine and all for fun, but usually the clips are so short and the title explains what's going to be funny + people put in japanese subtitles so they're way too easy. without the subs, i can usually decently understand what's happening but miss out on small details. but i'm also used to the cute weather girl voices already and it's good light-level listening comprehension, and good for working on my concentration/focus in general.



okay brown shogun, i came to your fucking log to see you bang anime girls in japan. @Toast doesn't even post anymore so ur the only japan guy now. but all u do is whine about random mental nonsense and trying to speak their dumbass language and there's hardly anything about GETTING LAID HERE???????????????? asians are EASY MODE bro they love americans!!!!!!! if i went to japan i would get like 15 lays in a month with ENGLISH!!!!!!!!!!

tl;dr good for u.

but i have to start over



when i joined the forums i was in a state of super-motivation and top mental health.

i had finally figured out how to control my life and follow a routine. that allowed me to very quickly start approaching girls, sans AA program, and even in pretty dicey situations early on, and i had easily added "going out and approaching" as a habit.

partially it was social unawareness and naivety, but the other half was already believing i was awesome. and at that point, i genuinely did believe that— in my eyes, i had basically "conquered" everything else in my life up until that point:

i had an above average salary in a field i was good at, i thought i was pretty above average in fitness despite being skinny (i was around 135-140lbs/61-63kg with visible abs, biked multiple times a week for 15-20 miles through the mountains, could do ~15 pullups and ~65 pushups, and tracked even micronutrients in my diet). additionally, i had ended a nearly 8 year "cold war"/silent period with my mom and was calling her once a week. so i finally felt i was "ready" to handle directly tackling my dating life.

my initial goals weren't shooting for the stars yet, i mainly just wanted a cute girlfriend to complement my ultra-baller master bedroom with a fireplace, fake plant decorations, and jacuzzi in the mountain house i lived in at the time.

and honestly, if i genuinely focused on that, i think i could have gotten it. i was already making inroads into making friend circles in my city (it was small, and if you made at least 5 friends, you basically had connections to everyone else in the town).

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except i learned way more was possible.

and then i realized what the fuck am i doing in a struggling post-industrial town in the south

that's when my world blew open. you guys saw me move all over the USA between fall 2021-2022, approaching in so many different cities, and going on dates, catching up on experiences i was probably supposed to have like 8-10 years prior.

but through my own experiences, and what seasoned veterans told me, i had slowly begun to realize i actually wasn't at the stage of "oh u just need to go talk to more girls lol".

for one, nobody cares how many fucking pullups you can do (even if you used to be able to do 26) nor how good your endurance cardio is. they want you to be fucking jacked and be able to kick ass.

and girls want to feel good around you. it's not about fast pulling and escalating like a robot, "u gotta have good vibes bro. u just gotta chill bro."

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"im not ready...something's weird about ur energy but i cant quite place it..."



that's probably where a bunch of pent up anger built up from. i thought my life experience was actually kind of standard, but turns out it wasn't. i was massively undersocialized and unaware of what people were interested in talking about.

and the very notion of conversation not being "let's exchange information", but rather "i want to feel good" (or more specifically "making the other person feel good") was alien to me.

and even though you could say i was obviously more fit than the average bumbling fat football fan drinking beer and eating hot dogs, it didn't matter because
1. i was way shorter than average, so being skinny just makes me look like a kid, regardless of how ripped or fit i am
2. i thought it was somehow a big deal to be above average fitness given that i actually started at a fucking zero (pre-forums, before 2019) (couldn't do a single pullup, over 10 minute mile time, never stepped foot in a gym, etc etc). but no one cares about the journey, they only care about the results, and mine weren't enough nor relevant for dating/social purposes

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i was actually around ~130lbs in this pic i believe


but having a lifetime habit of just stuffing it away and suppressing bad emotions, i mostly ignored it. and by the time i had realized most of the things i needed to realize in order to have a successful dating life, i was no longer in my baller mountain house living a solid routine, approaching everyday. i was living an erratic and passive lifestyle. i was completely unaware of how much my mental health had tanked.

i was unwillingly going out late multiple nights a week to broadway, sleeping at random hours (or sometimes not even sleeping) and i couldn't even concentrate on the simple task of doing even 1 hour of work a day, let alone a "full" 4 hours a day (which was plenty a year prior).

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i had increasing awareness of what i had to do to become elite, and made structured plans for what needed to be accomplished. but i couldn't focus on them at all and stay consistent.

i would do short bursts of hustle and impulsive actions, only to lose focus when i didn't get the results i wanted, and i was purely relying on my own motivation.

even my decision to come to japan was one of those actions.

i hadn't even realized the importance of general discipline over motivation earlier this year. motivation is magical and you feel good for just taking action but it randomly wanes out. i think i very well could have gotten better results in nashville had i understood exactly what discipline and habits were. sure, there were many surface level things i was doing wrong in the first place, but they were definitely fixable and even i foresaw a path to success in america.

but i didn't have the discipline to do it. any intermittent failure i had made me lose motivation and i stopped taking action.

hell i couldn't even concentrate on doing 1 hour of fucking work

washing windows for my last month in nashville was a good brain cleanser before coming to japan. but even that didn't truly teach me discipline because i was only able to consistently wake up early and finish window jobs because i had troy (my "boss") and the client over my head. plus, i didn't do it long enough to reap long-term real benefits of BLUE-COLLAR HARD LABOR work.

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which brings me to the present. i'm in nearly the exact place i want to be (ok i would actually prefer being in a second-tier japanese city like nagoya or fukuoka, but i came to tokyo since my lang school will end up being here.....altho in retrospect i should have just gone to nagoya or fukuoka for this trip lol!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i dont know why i thought that mattered).

after my initial honeymoon period of "zomg im in japan again" and settling into my current place, now i had to figure out what was stopping me from getting all of these cute japanese girls!!!!!!!!! that i came here for.

because at some point between august 2021 and now, i had lost the meaning of basic routines and discipline and was relying purely on erratic motivation. and my motivation was all gone from my red shirt year, realizing what i was faced with to get the life i wanted.

16 months ago, reading people's lay reports was fucking nuts to me and it was enough to get me out there even with no results of my own. and actually meeting people and getting guidance from them was even crazier, having seen in person what was possible. of course i can't forget my own experiences i had, which were largely a bunch of firsts or otherwise things i hadn't experienced in years/had less than 2-3 of.

but i had traded this "novely factor" and near-childlike innocence/"ignorance is bliss" motivation for a more sullen and boring dose of reality. with the dose of reality, now i knew what was necessary to get what i wanted.

but i became too jaded to simply be motivated to push forward and continue.
"oh great, yeah that guy got laid again lol"
"oh, so i'm just gonna do all this crap and get maybe one date and then maybe some pull and a makeout. and then even if i get the lay in some magical unicorn universe i'm going to bust in like 5 seconds. and i dont even have enough abundance to be able to iterate quickly enough to actually improve on these"

other than going to the gym and bulking, i spent all of my time in my little tiny room in this sharehouse wasting my time on the internet. obviously that didn't make me feel better. i tried various surface-level tactics like getting rid of my computer, limiting screen time, and otherwise restricting usage, without diagnosing and addressing the root causes of why i would have to do such things in the first place.

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feat. @Toast. went from idolizing him and following his cold approach log to literally meeting the guy in the country we both set our sights on. also i dont smoke now lol


recognizing that my lack of ability to just stfu and execute sans "motivation" was going to be the end of me, in true colgate fashion, i erratically started this new log, hoping the answer would reveal itself to me over time. i needed a clean slate to figure out what tf is happening.

but this time, the mental state i was in, and even now, is far behind the one i had when i first joined the forums, and probably the state i've been known to be in. i wasn't even aware of it when i made this log.

the only person from here who had any prolonged exposure to me in this state was @september when he visited nashville in november. in roughly his own words "this place is like a shell of what it used to be". i don't count lacroix or Troy in this because being my roommates, any changes in mental state i had would have been too gradual for them to even notice (or maybe they did, i don't know, but they didn't explicitly bring it up like september did, since he only knew me from my logs and group chat energy).

essentially, not only do have to do all the x y z a b c things to "play in the dating market", i have to go back even further and become someone who can even do said x y z a b c things.

because most of them aren't just fun things with instant feedback mechanisms. they're mostly "do this thing and then you will basically feel zero immediate benefits or get any feedback at all but over time if you keep doing them you'll notice very subtle changes that will exponentiate over time". they all require consistency over many months, even years, and deep focus. otherwise i'll just be repeatedly "working on x for 1.5 months and then randomly falling out".

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guys, really. i don't smoke now



after getting a brief rundown of the whole deal with "neural pathways" from @MakingAComeback over a whatsapp call, and this message:

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i finally realized what tf "discipline" is: it's when you can just "do" things regardless of your motivation and how you feel about them.

and how can you achieve that?

this is what confounded me forever up until now. after all, i only do things i want to do. but that doesn't really help me. i can make todo lists and plans all day.

and if i just follow "what makes me feel good", that obviously doesn't help either because the easiest way for me to "feel good" is excessive internet usage. might as well start vaping again. hell just start shooting up some heroin. wait, but now that's completely pointless. what's the point of keeping this sack of flesh and bones alive? might as well die.

of course that's quite the extreme extrapolation. in reality it's easy and convenient to stay digitally addicted. and anytime i realize that i have to put more than an iota of effort into doing something, i'm like oh wait but there was this other thing i was supposed to be doing instead of this. and then i get neither thing done. nor the rest of the items to do.

i'm going to talk more about meditation in future posts, but let's just say that it's essentially "focus training". it gives you the mental ability to focus, straight up. but like the gym, you have to train it for many months, probably even years. i'm at the equivalent of going from squatting the barbell to like 75lbs regarding focus.

and regarding the todo lists, it's mainly a mechanism for building a solid routine and habits in the first place. "building discipline".

it's kind of meta but i literally have to train myself to be able to follow a todo list.

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

I DON'T CARE IF ANYONE THINKS THIS LIST OF THINGS IS RETARDED SIMPLE

I WILL
() do dynamic stretches
() meditate 10 minutes
() eat breakfast

IF I CAN'T EVEN DO THIS, THEN THE NEXT DAY WILL BE EVEN SIMPLER
IF I CAN DO THIS, THEN I WILL MAKE THE NEXT DAY INCREMENTALLY MORE CHALLENGING

I WILL STARVE THE NEURAL PATHWAYS OF CONSTANT DIGITAL SELF-MEDICATION
I WILL CHOKE SLAM TECHNOLOGY INTO THE BED INSTEAD OF LETTING IT FUCK ME IN THE ASS
MY NEW NEURAL PATHWAY WILL BE literally doing what i set out to be doing in the first place omfg

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

that's why i started so retardedly simple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if i couldn't even do that, i was also prepared to make it as simple as literally

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

I WILL
() make my bed

slowly and incrementally, i am going to introduce new activities into the list, pertinent to my self-improvement/dating/goals/etc.

when i started approaching, i started with going out and approaching one girl too.

but as i said, i have recognized i'm starting way below where i used to be (i even pondered straight up making a new KYIL account to detach myself from the history of this one some weeks ago).

my ultimate goal with this is to be able to execute actions as consistently and as disciplined as @MakingAComeback does.

that will allow me to truly work on what needs to be worked on over a long period of time.

so if you're wondering why my goal says "japanese lay" but i'm over here talking about how meditating for 10 minutes is a fucking success, now you know.

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‍MEN AT WORK‍



anyway the general timeline for the next 15 months is basically:
now - mid feb:
build up discipline here in japan, putting in relevant actions into my routine
mid feb - mid mar:
go back to america to move out my stuff and get student visa whenever that arrives. this period is way longer than i'd like it to be but i'm limited by how quickly the student visa will arrive sooo
mid mar 2023 - mar 2024:
come back to japan, lang school for a whole year

really dislike that this new grind is going to get interrupted, but once i'm back in japan and settled in whatever apartment i will have then, i will have learned the lessons i need to regarding IRON WILL AND DISCIPLINE

[colgate]

i think with this group of people, i'm the "jacked brown guy from america who's good at japanese" because they really did see me not only improve my japanese since i was a beginner but to their surprise i went from a skinny nerd (細いオタク in their own words) to jacked (even tho i still have a long way to go).

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these 2 pictures were taken by the same person

1: me in japan in 2019, zero gym in my life. ~125 lbs
2: me now ~150 lbs

soon i will post the 2023 vs 2024 comparison and it will be even more nuts

these people have an impression of me that i'm this sociable jacked kickboxing guy who has high 行動力 (ability to take action) in their own words.

if not for me, i can't let the japanese people down

よろしくお願いします。絶対負けないぞ。

[colgate]

just stumbled upon this post thanks to @natedawg's sig, written by @AskTheDom

Are you fit with under 15% bf?
Can you lift your BW at least few times in bench-squat?
Is your skin/hair well groomed?
Do you have an archetype or you think you would blend completely in a crowd?
Are your clothes in fitting you good and in good order?

Are you doing one interesting thing per week? (anything interesting must be something not mainstream or that wouldn't be in regular lifestyles)
Are you wealthy enough to blow 200/300$ per month on dating and it won't affect your life?
Are your OLD photos well cured and done correctly?

Are you fit with under 15% bf?
fit yes, under 15% bf no

Can you lift your BW at least few times in bench-squat?
yes
bw: 68kg/150lbs, bench: 95kg/210lbs, squat: ~125kg/~275lbs


Is your skin/hair well groomed?
yes


Do you have an archetype or you think you would blend completely in a crowd?
no, and i need to figure out what archetype i can even do in japan
there's either whitemaxxing or seeing if i can fit into one of these three japanese archetypes
- 韓国系 - kpop star
- キレイめ系 - clean
- 輩系 - badboy

probably won't be able to do the kpop look because i have indian features and i want to be jacked anyway
seems like what i want to head for is clean or badboy anyway.

also people in japan who go purely based off of my appearance already think i do some kind of martial arts and aren't surprised when i say i did some boxing training in america. so there's that (i wonder how far the general "gymbro instagram street style" would go in japan anyway)


Are your clothes in fitting you good and in good order?
passable, but bland. not polarizing enough


Are you doing one interesting thing per week? (anything interesting must be something not mainstream or that wouldn't be in regular lifestyles)
no
when i come back to japan in march i plan on signing up for a kickboxing gym. but rn i'm trying to work on my flexibility so i can actually do kick moves.


Are you wealthy enough to blow 200/300$ per month on dating and it won't affect your life?
yes, but now i have no job and i'm living on savings. the savings should last me over a year, but over the next year i'll be doing way more self-improvement than pure dating. regardless i don't think this will be a problem because i know how to find a job.


Are your OLD photos well cured and done correctly?
no only because they're with my current looks and i need to revamp my image.

that being said, i have not tested them out on the japanese dating apps such as with, tapple, nor i have i actually given tinder a run.

but bumble basically gives me one girl messaging me every 4-6 days if i suck my thumb and swipe all day with the paid plan. i got sliiiiightly better results in america actually. however, i've even run out of girls to swipe on in tokyo. but "bro asians are easy mode" guys usually say bumble in japan is autopilot and they get messages nonstop. so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

these are the pics in my profile btw (the second one): viewtopic.php?p=40299#p40299

the japanese nampa/dating channel i've been spamming in this log lately has a whole playlist of how dating apps work in japan, and i've seen one of them so there's the research that has to be done

[natedawg]

just stumbled upon this post thanks to @natedawg's sig

Are you fit with under 15% bf?
Can you lift your BW at least few times in bench-squat?
Is your skin/hair well groomed?
Do you have an archetype or you think you would blend completely in a crowd?
Are your clothes in fitting you good and in good order?

Are you doing one interesting thing per week? (anything interesting must be something not mainstream or that wouldn't be in regular lifestyles)
Are you wealthy enough to blow 200/300$ per month on dating and it won't affect your life?
Are your OLD photos well cured and done correctly?

Are you fit with under 15% bf?
fit yes, under 15% bf no

Can you lift your BW at least few times in bench-squat?
yes
bw: 68kg/150lbs, bench: 95kg/210lbs, squat: ~125kg/~275lbs

Is your skin/hair well groomed?
yes

Do you have an archetype or you think you would blend completely in a crowd?
no, and i need to figure out what archetype i can even do in japan
there's either whitemaxxing or seeing if i can fit into one of these three japanese archetypes
- 韓国系 - kpop star
- キレイめ系 - clean
- 輩系 - badboy
probably won't be able to do the kpop look because i have indian features and i want to be jacked anyway
seems like what i want to head for is clean or badboy anyway.

Are your clothes in fitting you good and in good order?
passable, but bland. not polarizing enough

Are you doing one interesting thing per week? (anything interesting must be something not mainstream or that wouldn't be in regular lifestyles)
no
when i come back to japan in march i plan on signing up for a kickboxing gym. but rn i'm trying to work on my flexibility so i can actually do kick moves.

Are you wealthy enough to blow 200/300$ per month on dating and it won't affect your life?
yes, but now i have no job and i'm living on savings. the savings should last me over a year, but over the next year i'll be doing way more self-improvement than pure dating. regardless i don't think this will be a problem because i know how to find a job.

Are your OLD photos well cured and done correctly?
no only because they're with my current looks and i need to revamp my image

Yessir! This post is my north star for where I need to head in this part of my life. It's definitely helping me stay focused.

[NewFoundResolve]

ok dec 4 almost midnight here in japan

starting tomorrow dec 4 (it's 12:45am here in japan right now).

i had said this with the intent of going to bed immediately and getting ready for today, but instead i just hopped on my phone.

i rationalized myself with "oh i will use bumble finally now that i'm here in japan. besides i said in the post i have to start this when i wake up anyway so i'm free to do whatever i want now without reporting it"

soon you'll see why i'm deciding to report this part now after the fact

indeed i did adjust my profile slightly for japan, did the age+id verification that's required for dating apps here, bought the premium package for unlimited swipes, and got to work swiping

but then i was like oh lol let me share everything with my telegram group chat

and soon enough i was trapped in chatting again. though i rationalized to myself yet again it wasn't like i had a bunch of girls to message or anything yet

GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP

oh well now swiping on all these hot japanese anime idol girls is making me feel aroused

ehhhhhh ok let's look at some pr0n we might as well and falling asleep will probably be easier after jerking off (note that at this point i had already jerked off like 2 other times in the evening)

oh ok that's done oh what's this? botched trans surgeries and shocking gore gifs of people getting fucked up in the same place as the porn? wow that's so crazy damn i can't believe this happens to people. good thing i'm not that retarded, let's look at it so i can feel shocked but then also act smug about how i would never be that retarded. this would never happen to me because i'm a better person.

i'm KING OF THE RETARDS!

KING OF THE RETARDS
at least i'll never be like that

KING OF THE RETARDS
at least i'll never be like that

KING OF THE RETARDS
at least i'll never be like that

KING OF THE RETARDS
at least i'll never be like that

KING OF THE RETARDS
at least i'll never be like that

...
...
...


🫥🪦
‍




FUCK! I'M A VIRGIN! TIME TO HUSTLE!

this is one aspect that's so alluring about the internet. any time you have low self-esteem or disgust in yourself, you can fall into the trap of becoming a voyeur of degeneracy. and it's so accessible on the internet. you can look at people showcasing themselves in their squalid and depressed conditions, feel disgust, and then be relieved when you close out of it that you're not that person.

sometimes people fall into the trap of comparing themselves to others who are way better than they are. but equally dangerous is the trap of comparing yourself to those who are worse off.




what's cruel is that i had this mental "shell shock", and then still continued to mindlessly chat, all the way until sunrise around 6:30am

wow so this is how it starts. this is the beginning of the end




when i initially arrived in Japan, my sleep schedule was somehow perfect. i had been naturally falling asleep around 11:00pm and waking up around 7:00am for a week or so.

then for whatever reason, i started to sleep for 11-13 hours. even though I was still naturally falling asleep around 11:00pm-midnight, i was finding myself staying in bed and sleeping until close to noon the next morning.

what specifically would happen is i would open my eyes around 7:00-8:00, feel extremely comfortable in my bed, and then get the best 3 hour nap i could ever have. like i slept enough already but somehow the morning nap felt like total bliss, whilst the regular 7-9 hours of sleep felt like whatever



coincidentally, i had decided to wean off pretty much every single internet chat except for LINE. i mean i can update everyone on KYIL anyway and i should really be advancing my life now that i'm here in japan

i had ordered color contacts to experiment with some sort of ethnically ambiguous look. specifically these vibrant blue ones.

holy shit i look like a freaking alien. are these plus points?? you know i kinda like this??

let's ask my telegram chat. i guess it wouldn't harm to spin it up just for asking this. then i'll delete it again. people there are more knowledgeable about style

sure enough i got the feedback that it's way too bizarre and i have to try more subtle colors.

oh well now that i'm here let me literally respond to everything i "missed"

oh shit it's 3 am???

and so it begins.

this is how it fucking begins.




i woke up today at around 12:30pm. ok now we know for real i have to report everything i do.

eh ok let's mindlessly chat again! i mean i can do it for just a little while right. i'll chat for a little bit, then i'll go and be productive.

what on earth is this bleep bloop talk

bleep bloop talk???? WTF is that??? and why am i being accused of it???

whatever it is i don't want that label. sounds like the noise a digital addict makes. the "intellectual". "lol i am so smart here is my conjecture and model of reality and

no.

i purged telegram from my phone.

i put my laptop in my empty suitcase and stored it under my bed.

then i wrote up some thing in my journal with somehow simultaneous feelings of absolute rage but also elation. i will show it in 2 days.

but i proceeded to cull the junk from both of my phones and define what they should be used for and what they should not be used for.



by now it was around 3:30pm. time to finally start my day.

i ate lunch and pondered about what my relationship with technology should be

i realized writing these kinds of long posts is a huge time sink and while they're not as evil as other things i get trapped on with the internet, i thought about how can i most efficiently log my digital habits/daily life without spending.... what's now an hour and a half on my phone trying to write up some introspective hoopla in lieu of my laptop

IMG20221205005336.jpg
IMG20221205005345.jpg

yeah so more of the posts in this log will just be pictures of this "daily log" notebook with short comments instead of this long form journal style post

This and your first post in this thread is exactly me as well, I could not have put it better. I am now deep in a hole I have dug due mostly to the screen addiction and feel like I have mostly wasted my life up to this point. That must stop now.

[colgate]

This and your first post in this thread is exactly me as well, I could not have put it better. I am now deep in a hole I have dug due mostly to the screen addiction and feel like I have mostly wasted my life up to this point. That must stop now.

i've determined a punitive approach (as seen in my multiple failures here) does not work, and in my case, the problem is not necessarily an addiction to the "internet world" itself but rather a lack of validation and positive feedback from the real world

so now i'm trying the opposite approach where i build up my life how i want it, free from mindless digital usage, one block at a time.

it's also given that i do actually need to use the computer and the internet to further my goals.

but its usage has to be focused.

and if i want to build focused usage, then i must build focus in the first place.

i hope to at some point come out with a more concise guide for what to do regarding digital addiction once i figure it out myself.

[colgate]

TOMORROW I WILL BE A SUCCESS

() wake up 6:30am
() eat breakfast
() dynamic stretching
() meditate 10 mins
() no computer or phone for 30 mins (new activity)
() walk to gym (between 9 and 10am)

i thought about and wrote out a master plan "ideal day"

i have done similar things in the past and repeatedly failed only because following MANY ITEMS on a todo list is not something my brain knows how to do yet (or really ever knew how to do)

but the difference is, this time i can use it as a guide to add new tasks to this progressive overload approach i'm taking

additionally, since i'm executing "partial" ideal days, i can tweak the "ideal day" master plan based on my actual experiences.

i won't share the "ideal day" plan now, rather eventually this log will eventually have my days focused to the T from wake to sleep.


regarding the new activity. i kinda don't want to immediately start lounging on the computer after my main morning routine. and it's too early to go straight to the gym after that (as i said earlier, the gym is in a train station and i kinda don't want to hit morning rush hour, also i'd rather go explore outside later after i workout and i'd prefer to do that in the late morning).

i have plenty of books and magazines i can be reading and an electronic japanese dictionary, including japanese fitness content. i've found trying to read somewhat difficult (for me)/nonfiction japanese content at night just stimulates and amps me up when i get into it so i'd prefer to do it in the morning.

eventually i want to extend it to 1 hour, but i'm gonna start small with 30 mins


also i did hyperbolic stretching front split exercise just to say that i did it in this post lol

[colgate]

TODAY I WAS A SUCCESS

wake up 6:30am
eat breakfast
dynamic stretching
meditate 10 mins (-> now going to call this "focused breathing")
no computer or phone for 30 mins (new activity)
walk to gym


ok this day is why progressively building up a daily routine one new task and one day at a time is a good idea. will talk about it in this post


sleep and meditating
right around when i went to bed (around 9:15pm), i wanted to jerk off.

wait, but i can probably just meditate this away....right??? right??? would that actually work....

so i set a meditation timer for 10 minutes

and within like 30 seconds i already forgot about being horny.

WTF

i just decided to do a 10 minute meditation (not the one i did this morning), which was VERY HARD. i had to physically move my arms up and down to the breaths to focus on the breathing and away from the thoughts. it was the mental/focus equivalent of struggling on a rep at the gym.

what's hilarious is that i had another thought pop up a bit later during that meditation realizing that i completely forgot what the thought pattern that had me in agony just minutes prior.

wait, i can literally just force the thoughts to go away????????????????????????????????????? this is possible????????????????????????????????????????????

i talked about this the night before too with a similar mini anxiety moment.

literally NOT indulging it and instead immediately substituting the urge with meditating makes it go away.

i was so impatient that i didn't even continue the meditation after 30 seconds and i just lay down in bed instead.

then i just did my usual thing of setting off a bunch of 3 minute meditation timers until i fell asleep (i think it actually took me like 5 or 6 this time)

...

except i woke up around 1 in the morning randomly coughing.

i've been mildly sick lately (though i think i should be better in 1-2 days, i already feel fine right now as i write this)

i tried to meditate myself back to sleep again, but as soon as i got into the pre-sleep lull, i was RUDELY! jolted back with a horrendous cough

since there was no phlegm in the cough, i determined that it was due to the japanese winter bone-dry air (today i bought a room humidifier lol)

hopping in the shower real quick eased the cough. though i was basically wide awake now.

again, i did more 3-minute meditations and fell asleep after probably 3 or 4 of those.


the next day...
i tried to do the 30 mins "no phone/computer" task immediately after the morning 10 min meditation.

was going to read this japanese gold's gym training note that i received for attending my local gold's gym 12 times

but i basically fell asleep after a few minutes. for 3 hours

ok technically i didnt use a screen for 30 mins... broooo that doesnt count LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

later, i lamented to my friend that i thought i'd be able to give this a "quick read on the plane" but even a paragraph takes me forever. she commented that this is basically like a school textbook LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

684182.jpg

what i'm trying to say is, even tho im waking up at 6:30am, i am NOT naturally a morning person and i have way more energy and focus later in the evening. and doing some intensive task at 8am like literally reading chinese characters is a great way to fall right back asleep

ok let's come back to that later.


gym
anyway, after that i had a fun adventure for like an hour through the various districts of shibuya trying to find a fucking gold's gym that was open on new years....uhhh morn??? (it's jan 2 here)

eventually i landed at the shibuya gold's gym which has a fucking pool at the front entrance

IMG_2769-300x225-3527949683.jpg

finally got around to doing a workout. i mentioned three weeks ago that i was "banned" from doing shoulder workouts for the rest of the month and had to go easy on the chest workouts too, which also kinda spiraled into me not being able to do serious workouts for a while.

well "the rest of the month" is over, so of course i obviously...did a shoulder workout!!!

i used the 5kg dumbbells (which is half of what i used to be doing) for shoulder lateral raises, but i...think there still might be some slight pain??? i'm not so sure, but i'll monitor it and see if i can do other exercises now throughout the week. and i'll probably just stick with this weight...or maybe not even do this exercise for a while.


5 hot girls
i walked around shibuya to eat lunch (horse sashimi) and buy a humidifier.

holy fuckkkk

i don't think i talk about this enough but there's just hot girls everywhere in japan.

and not just in shibuya. like literally near any major train station in any first/second-tier city in japan.

walk down the street for 5 seconds, 5 hot girls pass by

innocently sit down to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, 5 hot girls, with the rare sight of without their masks!!!

ride the train, 5 hot girls playing on their phones

the number of hot girls is just...there's too damn many

i thought about what the version of me from any time before february 2022 came here would be doing

i thought about the weird mild-agoraphobia i kinda ended up inducing myself into

i thought about how fucking @Mimbe393939 is going to show up here in july with his dumbass japanese (ok he's def gonna be conversational lol) and how he's going to be rocket approaching all of these girls the day he lands. and how he's definitely going to be fucking like 3 of them a week.

there's no fucking way im going to be like this soon. i'm changing things




uhhh.....except i went home and frantically searched random apartments with "better logistics" that i'm not even going to move into, and then like 2 hours of random browsing and iofuergqeorhq34i89qu5ghipq

i felt like today was so focused up until that point

and now i could freshly compare my mental state between before i decided to lounge around on the internet, and after

this is where normally, i would get depressed and feel defeated. that today is a failure and now there's no point in continuing so lets just browse it up until the late night.

but now i knew how to get my mental state back into focus. i actually have control of my mind. i can turn "iofuergqeorhq34i89qu5ghipq" into clean focus again.

i still had "no screens 30 mins" left to do. and "gold's gym training note" to read.

after a quick shower, i did 10 minutes of focused breathing.

and then i set a timer for 30 minutes for the final task.

684177.jpg

uhhhh...yeah...the intro paragraph and one bullet point took me 30 minutes of hard focus to read (i have an electronic dictionary so i'm not using my phone or computer. the electronic dictionary doesn't count as a screen guys...).

reminds me of when i spent 12 hours just to read 10 sentences of "easy" japanese years ago.

and no wonder why i couldn't just "read this on the plane" lol



with that...the day became a success